KU Museum held oldest fossilized brain

Monday, March 9, 2009

Researchers in Grenoble, France recently identified the world’s most ancient fossilized brain, which came from a collection in the University of Kansas Natural History Museum.

The fossilized brain is from an extinct species of fish.

Larry Martin, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and the museum’s curator, said the fish were usually about one foot long. The brain was analyzed by researchers in France using a particle accelerator, similar to a high-resolution CAT scan. Researchers determined the fossil was about 300 million years old. The findings of the research were published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Martin said fossilization usually occurred when a large fish would eat a smaller fish, and regurgitated body parts like the brain. Phosphates then surrounded the body part, creating a type of nucleus that preserved the fossil.

The Natural History Museum has several hundred similar fish specimens. Martin said the fossilized specimens were about the size of walnuts, and had to be opened in order to reveal the fossils.

“It’s really much like collecting and cracking nuts,” Martin said.

The fossilized fish were found around the Vinland and Baldwin City area in the 1920s and 1930s, and had been stored at the museum until being loaned out to the French researchers. Martin said much of the Midwest, including the Lawrence area, was covered by ocean.

“These fossils can give us information about these animals, that no one else can get anywhere else,” Martin said.

— — Grant Treaster

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