According to a CNN article, a study of a 319-million-year-old fossilised fish’s head revealed the earliest example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain. The most recent discovery sheds new light on the origins of bony fish. The skull fossil, which belonged to the extinct Coccocephalus wildi, was discovered in an English coal mine more than a century ago, according to researchers whose study was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
Since the fossil is the sole known example of the fish, researchers from the Universities of Michigan in the US and Birmingham in the UK employed the nondestructive imaging technology of computed tomography (CT) scanning to investigate the internal body anatomy of the head.
The C. wildi was an early ray-finned fish. It had a backbone and fins supported by bony rods called ‘rays’. It used to eat small aquatic animals and insects, the researchers said.
The brains of ray-finned fish display contain structural features that are not seen in other vertebrates. There is a forebrain consisting of neural tissue that folds outward, according to the study. This tissue folds inward in other vertebrates.
Researchers say that unlike hard bones and teeth, brain tissue, which is soft and preserved in vertebrate fossils, is extremely hard to find. The study said that the fish’s brain was ‘exceptionally’ well preserved.
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