Paleontologists can spend years carefully splitting rocks in search of the perfect fossil. But with a 310-million-year-old horseshoe crab brain, nature did the work, breaking the fossil in just the right way to reveal the ancient arthropod’s central nervous system.
Horseshoe crabs have a fossil record spanning roughly 445 million years. But having a long fossil record is one thing. For many animals, including the crabs, fossils of their soft tissues are extremely uncommon because the tissues tend to degrade far quicker than fossilization can occur. Finding the delicate fatty structures that form a brain preserved in rock is especially rare. Only about 20 samples of fossilized arthropod neural tissue have been identified to date.
Horseshoe crabs have a fossil record spanning roughly 445 million years. But having a long fossil record is one thing. For many animals, including the crabs, fossils of their soft tissues are extremely uncommon because the tissues tend to degrade far quicker than fossilization can occur. Finding the delicate fatty structures that form a brain preserved in rock is especially rare. Only about 20 samples of fossilized arthropod neural tissue have been identified to date.
