Nature & Environment
World's First Ever Fossilized Dinosaur Brain Discovered
Elaine Hannah
First Posted: Oct 29, 2016 05:30 AM EDT
Jamie Hiscock of East Sussex in England, a fossil enthusiast, spotted a small brown pebble around southeastern England a decade ago. It turned out after a brief examination of paleontologist the finding was a fossilized dinosaur brain.
Huffington Post reports that the fossilized dinosaur brain belongs to an Iguanodon, which is a plant-eating dinosaur that inhabited the earth 133 million years ago during the start of the Cretaceous period. This was the first example of fossilized dinosaur brain ever discovered.
"I noticed there was something odd about the preservation," said Hiscock. He further said that it wasn't until years later that its true significance came to be realized.
The fossil hunter then took the dinosaur brain to Martin Brasie, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford. After a decade of assessing the sample, a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Western Australia stated that the sample Hiscock found was a preserved dinosaur brain of Iguanodon.
Martin Smith, a paleontologist at the University of Durjam in the UK said that the preservation of brain tissue in this way is so unbelievably unlikely that it just shouldn't have happened---yet there it is. Meanwhile, co-author Dr. Alex Liu, a palaeobiologist at the University of Cambridge said that the brain tissues are amongst the least likely tissues they would expect to ever found in a fossilized terrestrial vertebrate, as noted by IFL Science.
Among the discoveries and seen in the CT scans were the fossilized remnants of strands of blood vessels, capillaries, collagen networks and even the outer layers of neural tissues. They were preserved by means of the natural pickling process.
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First Posted: Oct 29, 2016 05:30 AM EDT
Jamie Hiscock of East Sussex in England, a fossil enthusiast, spotted a small brown pebble around southeastern England a decade ago. It turned out after a brief examination of paleontologist the finding was a fossilized dinosaur brain.
Huffington Post reports that the fossilized dinosaur brain belongs to an Iguanodon, which is a plant-eating dinosaur that inhabited the earth 133 million years ago during the start of the Cretaceous period. This was the first example of fossilized dinosaur brain ever discovered.
"I noticed there was something odd about the preservation," said Hiscock. He further said that it wasn't until years later that its true significance came to be realized.
The fossil hunter then took the dinosaur brain to Martin Brasie, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford. After a decade of assessing the sample, a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Western Australia stated that the sample Hiscock found was a preserved dinosaur brain of Iguanodon.
Martin Smith, a paleontologist at the University of Durjam in the UK said that the preservation of brain tissue in this way is so unbelievably unlikely that it just shouldn't have happened---yet there it is. Meanwhile, co-author Dr. Alex Liu, a palaeobiologist at the University of Cambridge said that the brain tissues are amongst the least likely tissues they would expect to ever found in a fossilized terrestrial vertebrate, as noted by IFL Science.
Among the discoveries and seen in the CT scans were the fossilized remnants of strands of blood vessels, capillaries, collagen networks and even the outer layers of neural tissues. They were preserved by means of the natural pickling process.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone