{"id":125907,"date":"2021-08-06T00:36:05","date_gmt":"2021-08-06T07:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/310-million-year-old-brain-exceptionally-preserved-in-unique-fossil"},"modified":"2021-08-06T00:36:05","modified_gmt":"2021-08-06T07:36:05","slug":"310-million-year-old-brain-exceptionally-preserved-in-unique-fossil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/310-million-year-old-brain-exceptionally-preserved-in-unique-fossil","title":{"rendered":"310-million-year-old Brain Exceptionally Preserved in Unique Fossil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/310-million-year-old-brain-exceptionally-preserved-in-unique-fossil2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers have discovered one of the oldest and best-preserved brains in the fossil record. A 310-million-year-old horseshoe crab was found with its complete brain intact, thanks to a previously unknown preservation method.<\/p>\n<p>The majority of our knowledge of ancient creatures comes from bones \u2013 soft tissues don\u2019t fossilize very well. Some mechanisms are better than others at preserving these fragile tissues though, most famously amber. Scientists can then scan amber-encased creatures to image their brains and other organs.<\/p>\n<p>But that record only goes back so far. The oldest amber inclusions date back about 230 million years ago, to the Triassic period. Burgess Shale-type deposits, however, extend as far back as 520 million years ago, to the early Cambrian. These mudstone deposits can also preserve soft tissues as carbon films \u2013 most commonly the gut, but on rare occasions imprints of parts of the nervous system can be found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers have discovered one of the oldest and best-preserved brains in the fossil record. A 310-million-year-old horseshoe crab was found with its complete brain intact, thanks to a previously unknown preservation method. The majority of our knowledge of ancient creatures comes from bones \u2013 soft tissues don\u2019t fossilize very well. Some mechanisms are better than [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}