- A remarkable fossilized larva has been discovered by scientists with its brain and guts still intact.
- The fossilized creature is one of the earliest ancestors of a group known as arthropods, which includes insects, crabs, and lobsters.
- A unique window into the past, the ancient critter has allowed experts a chance to better understand evolutionary links between the arthropods of the pasta and those of the present day.
We know what fossils look like. For example, typical dinosaur fossils are bones turned to stone and preserved from the passage of time located, if we’re particularly lucky, in large collections that can be reassembled to represent the beast they used to prop up in their entirety.
Now, not all fossils are like that. Some are just impressions of small creatures or animals left in rocks, but most have something in common—it’s just the hard stuff left behind. With the exception of those found in environments particularly adept at preservation, the soft tissues degrade over time and all we’re left with is stony bone.
But not always. Sometimes we get lucky—like a team did recently, when they located a fossil of a 520-million-year-old worm larva that still had its brain and guts intact.
“It’s always interesting to see what’s inside a sample using 3D imaging,” Katherine Dobson, one of the co-authors of a new study centered on this remarkable find, said in a press release, “but in this incredible tiny larva, natural fossilization has achieved almost perfect preservation.”
Bugs Marlowe