Not exact matches
Found along the coast of north Greenland, the 518 - million - year - old fossils contained enough
preserved brains and eyes to help researchers write a brand - new history of the arthropod nervous system.
Several specimens of the species, Fuxianhuia protensa (left), contain dark areas within their
eye stalks (see fossil, above right; gray areas in sketch, bottom right) that represent
preserved clusters of neural tissue, including clumps along the optic nerve (labeled 1 through 3 in the sketch)
and the
brain (lowermost mass).
The evolution of vision in vertebrates is an important theme in the history of animal life, however, aside from the calcified lenses of fossilised arthropods, other parts of the visual system are not usually
preserved in the fossil record because the soft tissue of the
eye and brain decays rapidly days after death.