The study of two tiny fossils, from 508 million years ago, brought a curious situation to science. The material, from Cambrian insect-like creatures, showed very well-preserved fossilized nerve tissue.
According to the researchers, these tiny fossils could help piece together the evolutionary history of modern spiders and scorpions. So far, however, scientists cannot say where the fossils, of the species Mollisonia symmetrica, fit into the evolutionary tree of arthropods.
Javier Ortega-Hernández, paleobiologist and leader of the study, says the discovery is a rarity. The first time such a thing was found was in 2012, when scientists found the first evidence of a fossilized Cambrian arthropod brain.
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Since then, paleontologists have found preserved nerve tissue in more than a dozen fossils from the same period, most of them arthropods.
Details
One of the fossils measures about 13 millimeters long and 3.5 millimeters wide at its widest point. The other is even smaller and is in another position, measuring 7.5 millimeters in length and 1.7 millimeters in height.
The study explains that the fossils have an exoskeleton, segmented trunk, pairs of appendages, tusks and limbs. Fossilized nerves have black spots, like ink, as the fossilization process has turned the tissue into films of organic carbon.
The researchers were also able to identify, in one of the fossils, a bulbous eye on the top of the head, as well as a nerve cord along the belly and some nerves coming out from the bottom. In the other, there are two large eyes on the top of the head and a piece of nerve cord that runs through the entire digestive tract.
According to scientists, the animals gave rise to the highly condensed brains of modern scorpions, spiders, horseshoe crabs and ticks.
