The 300 Million Year Old Brain

Pickens writes "Paleontologists recently discovered the world's oldest brain nestled within a 300-million-year-old fish fossil of one of the extinct relatives of modern ratfishes, also known as 'host sharks' or chimaeras. These chimaera relatives, called iniopterygians, represented bizarre beasts that sported massive skulls with huge eye sockets, shark-like teeth in rows, tails with clubs, huge pectoral fins that were placed almost on their backs, and bone-like spikes or hooks tipping the fins. The brain shows details such as a large vision lobe and optic nerve stretching to the proper place on the braincase, which fits with the fish's large eye sockets. The ear canals of the extinct fish only exist on a horizontal plane so the fish could only detect side-to-side movements, and not up or down. 'There is nothing like this known today; it is really bizarre,' said John Maisey, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. 'But now that we know that brains might be preserved in such ancient fossils, we can start looking for others. We are limited in information about early vertebrate brains, and the evolution of the brain lies at the core of vertebrate history.'"

Amazing

[eclectro]

That it escaped all the zombies from back then. Dinosaur zombies.

Re:

[cbiltcliffe]

Troll?

Cracksmoking mods with no sense of humour.....

Is going to cause some serious reexamination.

[JoshuaZ]

The brain in question is pretty small compared to the brain case. Since brain case size is the main method of telling how large a brain an animal had this is going to suggest some possible need to reevaluate that technique's accuracy beyond providing an upper bound on brain size.

Re:Is going to cause some serious reexamination.

[denzacar]

It did attend school.

Only, as TFA said it - it was a Kansas school.
So it got a little confused about evolving a proper size brain. Or was that intelligently designing a proper size brain?

Re:

[Cowmonaut]

While funny, I can't help but think that if it was a joke supporting 'intelligent' design it would of been modded Troll/Flamebait...

Of course not - don't be silly...

[denzacar]

What else can a support of "intelligent" design be but a joke?

Re:

[modecx]

What else can a support of "intelligent" design be but a joke?

What is a pity?

Re:

[NotBornYesterday]

It must have attended college and law school. It was a patent lawyer for SCO.

Re:Is going to cause some serious reexamination.

[Meneguzzi]

I am not a doctor, archaeologist, biologist or any other relevant profession, but is there not any shrinkage do body parts and organs as they lose humidity after death? Of course this is not necessarily a good comparison, but all the mummies I saw on museums had clearly shrunk with time, so is it not fair to assume that fossilized brains were larger when the animal was alive?

Surface

[DrYak]

Also, the grey matter surface (cortex) plays a more important role than the total volume occupied by the brain.

Re:

[JoshuaZ]

I'm by no means an expert in this area, but from my reading of TFA there isn't much sign of shrinkage in this case. In particularly, the optic nerves stretch out more or less as far as they should if there wasn't much shrinkage.

Re:Kansas?

[anagama]

It was transported there by rail of course. Airplanes didn't exist way back when earth that makes up Kansas was underwater.

Re:Kansas?

[Gregory Arenius]

It was stranded there after God flooded the Earth. Really. :)

Cheers,
Greg

Re:Kansas?

[CarpetShark]

Large eye for seeing in the dark.

Large eyes might correlate with needing to see in the dark THESE days, but we can't really make that assumption about other times without (at least) hard statistics. It could be, for example, that all eyes were large eyes, until small eyes evolved.

Define irony...

[denzacar]

We are limited in information about early vertebrate brains, and the evolution of the brain lies at the core of vertebrate history.'

But paleontologists recently discovered the oldest known example nestled within a 300-million-year-old fish fossil from Kansas.

Boy, are some intelligently designed people going to be pissed off at this fish.
Not only is it 300 million years old, but it is also not very intelligently designed with that "can't see up or down"-vision.
And all that right under their noses without them even noticing it.

One would think that the 300 million years old fishy smell would be a giveaway.

Re:

[radtea]

Just a thought but that fish looks like a deep water ocean fish. Large eye for seeing in the dark.

It's fairly common for fish that live near the littoral to have large eyes. Modern ratfish, of which this thing is an ancestor, have big eyes, and I've seen them in shallow water.

Not only is it dark half the time even at the surface, the amount of light available drops off very quickly with depth in most places due to plankton etc. Divers travel the world to find places with good visibility.

Furthermore, in h

WTF?

[MillionthMonkey]

So does it still work after all this time or not?

Re:

[nu1x]

Of course ! If there's a glaspipe around, there should be a sufficient motivation for it to hop around and light one UP ! :P

Re:

[Naomiah]

How would it know? The bud from 300 million years ago probably hadn't even evolved to be sticky.

Host Sharks?

[nog_lorp]

Please. Also known as ghost sharks makes a little more sense.

Re:

[Samah]

Please. Also known as ghost sharks makes a little more sense.

Wait, is that ghosts who became sharks, or sharks who became ghosts?

Re:

[TheGratefulNet]

it was just a hostscript error afterall!

Joan Rivers?

[Forrest Kyle]

When I first read the headline, I thought to myself, "What does Joan Rivers have to do with science?" =)

Re:

[ibsteve2u]

What? You don't think of Joan Rivers when you think of something that is really, really old?

This research is useful...

[MillenneumMan]

I am hoping they can apply the results of this research to finding brains in Senators and Congressmen

So they found one so long ago...

[MindVirus]

And can't find one now?

Tinfins 2

[Safiiru]

If ever any brain needed to be put in a robot body, it would be that one.

lasers

[rogeroger]

those huge eye sockets may interfere with standard laser mounts

Re:lasers

[MadKeithV]

Only on /. could that possibly be insightful.

Re:

[ColdWetDog]

And only on Slashdot could your post be informative.

Re:

[dino2gnt]

Wait, where's the +5, Funny? ??? Profit?

Re:

[that IT girl]

Aint it great?

Re:

[CarpetShark]

Only on /. could that possibly be insightful.

What else can you tag a comment about eyes?

Re:

[chadplusplus]

The huge eye sockets were the laser mounts. That's why the were so huge!

These chimaera relatives, called iniopterygians, represented bizarre beasts that sported massive skulls with huge eye sockets, shark-like teeth in rows, tails with clubs, huge pectoral fins that were placed almost on their backs, and bone-like spikes or hooks tipping the fins.

A beast like that MUST have lasers somewhere! . . . And big pointy teeth.

What?

[Opportunist]

No "they saved fishy's brain" jokes? Not even a tag?`

You're getting old, people.

Re:

[jd]

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

I fink so, Brain, but why do Slashdotters paint their toenails pink after eating custard?

Re:

[that IT girl]

Some of us do! ;)

Re:

[jd]

What, ponder that? :)

Re:

[that IT girl]

Haha, I was waiting for someone to call me out on that. One of those moments where you realise the awkward phrasing *after* it's too late.

I mean no, I meant it that way. And then I ponder myself pondering that. And so forth and so on and then holy crap infinite loop of ponderage.

Aby someone?!

[GlobalColding]

Igor: Yes, I believe that is what the label said. Maybe Aby Normal...

RIAA's lost brain

[tomrud]

So they have finally found the brain that RIAA is missing.

Is it really bizarre?

[macxcool]

It seems to me that the act of labeling this fish bizarre is itself bizarre. Just because proportions are not what we are used to seeing does not make them necessarily weird. Organisms are designed for the environment they live in and their physical characteristics reflect that. Perhaps interesting or unusual would be better adjectives ;-).

Unexpected

[huckamania]

Unexpected is a more apt description. I haven't read TFA yet, cause I like to read the funny on /. first, but it isn't unusual for modern scientists to describe some phenomena as bizarre because the universe did not yield the results they expected. What is interesting is the increase in bizarre phenomena which doesn't fit the current dogma.

A true scientist will admit that they don't have all of the answers. A great scientist will realize that they aren't even asking the right question.

It's all there i

I thought the chimera were defeated...

[jacksinn]

[Enter Nathan Hale]