Cool fossil find from Kansas. Paleontologists discovered the oldest fossilized brain in a 300-million-year-old fish fossil.
The American Museum of Natural History's release says:
"Fossilized brains are unusual and this is by far the oldest known example," said John Maisey, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "There is nothing like this known today; it is really bizarre."
I wanted to know where in Kansas that this fossil was discovered. I called the American Museum of Natural History and spoke with Kristin Elise Phillips, a science publicist. She did some digging and here's what she found out:
The fossils occur at the limit between the Haskell Limestone Member and the overlying Robbins Shale of the Stranger Formation (dated as Late Virgilian; 305-299 Myr) and crop out between the towns of Lawrence and Baldwin, KS. The specimens belong to the collection of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, Lawrence (KUNHM 22060 and 21894).I'm not real familiar with Late Virgilian, but I am impressed. Also, here's a 3-D reconstruction of the mineralized brain inside of the braincase.
Green - skull (see eyesockets), red = braincase, orange = brain. Note
brains of lower vertebrates tend to be much smaller than braincase
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