A great discovery was made in China, it is the brain oldest fossilized in history, dating back more than 525 billion years, and that is from a worm.
The ancient creature, known as Cardiodictyon catenulum, was discovered in 1984 along with many other fossils, collectively known as the Chengjiang fauna, at a site in the Chinese province of Yunnan. The worm-like creature belongs to the Lobopodia phylum, a group of extinct seafloor-dwelling arthropod ancestors with armored shells and stubby legs that were abundant during the Cambrian period (541 million to 485.4 million years ago).
In a new study, published Nov. 24 in the journal Arthropod Evolution. Another team of scientists re-analyzed the fossilized specimen and discovered that it had been hiding an amazing secret: a preserved nervous system, including a brain.
“To our knowledge, this is the oldest fossilized brain that we know of, so far,” said the study’s lead author,Nicholas Strausfelda neurobiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said in a release.
“This anatomy was completely unexpected,” Strausfeld said. “For more than a century, researchers thought that the brains and heads of extinct arthropods were segmented just like those of modern arthropods; Most fossils of other ancient arthropod ancestors also show segmented heads and brains,” he added.
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