Pigmented structures found in the head regions of fossilized arthropodsJ. LIU ET AL, PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B, 2018Finding preserved soft tissue—such as brain or muscle—in fossils that are millions of years old is rare, and possibly even more so given a new suggestion that some reports of such discoveries may be misinterpretations. A study published today (April 11) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B challenges previous work identifying brain tissue in half-billion-year-old arthropods from southern China. The authors assert that the fossilized structures are actually preserved microbes, igniting debate among paleobiologists
“Interpreting the anatomy of ancient fossils is always a challenge,” coauthor Jason Dunlop of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin writes in an email to The Scientist. “The difficulty is trying to work out whether what you are seeing is really part of the animal’s original body, or an artifact which is due to the way in which the animal decayed.”
In 2012, Nicholas Strausfeld of the University of Arizona and colleagues described the preservation of the brain and optic lobes of a fossilized arthropod, about four centimeters long with a many-segmented, shell-covered body. The findings were surprising, not only because few expected soft tissue to survive fossilization, but also because the brain in question was more complex than anticipated based on the organism’s evolutionary ...
