The brilliant brains of two old fossilized sea monster like creatures help to understand how the ancestors of the modern arthropods such as scorpions and locusts, designed as shown in a recent study by researchers.
The new research focuses on an oval structure called the anterior sclerite, which is in the mind of the ancient arthropods. Sclerite Front has long puzzled researchers, especially since some prehistoric arthropods have, some not, and the situation changes in the head, depending on the quality of the fossils.
But now, the petrified brains have helped solve the mystery. An analysis of the front escleritos Two fossils of arthropods, both more than 500 million years indicates that the structures were connected to the creatures eyes bulging. The results show that these oval structures were connected to nerves originating in the front of the brain according to the study.
"We can say," Ah-ha, that sclerite come forward, is the largest front of the brain - the former 'brain, "said researcher Javier Ortega-Hernandez, researcher at Paleobiology at the University of Cambridge in the United together.
Cambrian creatures
Fossilized brains are rare but not unknown in the fossil record. Since 2011, researchers have about a study on samples that fossilized incredible nerve tissue, including a 520 million years in China arthropods found published.
Brains fossilize only if the conditions are right, Ortega said Hernandez Live Science. For example, when conditions suddenly poor in oxygen of an animal, which are rich in certain minerals buried, like carbon, nerve tissue fossilize have a chance, where Ortega-Hernandez.
In the new study, the study of Ortega-Hernandez two fossils have been discovered in British Columbia Burgess Shale in the 20th century Fossils are close from 500 million to 510 million years old, which means that the animals lived during the Middle Cambrian. The samples are housed in a collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC
One sample, Helmetia expansa, is a soft-bodied arthropods trilobites type, Ortega-Hernandez said. The other arthropods, higher odaraia alata, is like a submarine as he said.
"We know from the fossil record, which are the earliest ancestors of soft-bodied arthropods. They look a bit like worms with legs," Ortega-Hernandez said. "But then, at some point in time we begin to see the arthropods that occur much more known. They have these joint skeleton.
"The question is how something that looks nothing arthropods in something that looks a lot like the back arthropods?"
It turns out that, "we can begin to save, how these two different organizations of the body are actually part of a continuum" "by understanding the organization of the region of the head," or the previous sclerite, Ortega-Hernandez said.
Living arthropods do not have a front sclerite hitting the heads of arthropods changed over time, experts say.
"This suggests that the anterior sclerite lost or merged in the shield head arthropods living was" David Legg, said an investigator with experience in the early evolution of arthropods and phylogenetic at the Museum of the University of Oxford History Natural in the UK, who was not involved in the study.
"This helps to determine the use to segment the other segments of the rear head included, which allows us to compare these fossils and recent arthropods and processes developed for a better understanding of the relationships and how" he said.
In addition, the study will help to close two seemingly unrelated neurology and Paleontology, said Greg Edgecombe, an evolution of arthropods investigator Natural History Museum, London, who was not involved in the study areas.
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