An international team of paleontologists has identified the exquisitely preserved brain in the fossil of one of the worlds first known predators that lived in the Lower Cambrian, about 520 million years ago. The discovery revealed a brain that is surprisingly simple and less complex than those known from fossils of some of the animals prey. The find for the first time identifies the fossilized brain of what are considered the top predators of their time, a group of animals known as anomalocaridids, which translates to abnormal shrimp. Long extinct, these fierce-looking arthropods were first discovered as fossils in the late 19th century but not properly identified until the early 1980s. They still have scientists arguing over where they belong in the tree of life.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 18:07:57 +0000
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