Oldest fossil brain found in Kansas and imaged in France
Tuesday, March 3, 2009 - 10:08
in Paleontology & Archaeology
When Alan Pradel of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris CAT scanned a 300-million-year-old fossilised iniopterygian from Kansas, he and his colleagues saw a symmetrical blob nestled within the braincase. This turned out to be the oldest brain found in fossil form, a wholly unexpected and rare discovery. Additional scanning on the synchrotron at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France (and using a new X-Ray approach) yielded detailed information about the structure of brain, the shape of the braincase, and the nerves running between the two features...