WE ARE DEVO:

A 500million year old insect brain fossil is the oldest of its kind ever discovered by scientists.

Hailing the find a 'transformative discovery', experts said the 3in long fossil shows that insects evolved to have complex brains much earlier than previously thought.

The specimen, which was unearthed in Yunnan Province, China, provides a 'missing link' that sheds light on the evolutionary history of arthropods, the ancient ancestors of crustaceans, spiders and insects, researchers said.

A transformative discovery: This 3-inch long fossil shows that insects evolved to have complex brains much earlier than previously thought and could revolutionise our understanding of their evolution

The report's author Nicholas Strausfeld, a neurobiologist at the University of Arizona, said: 'No one expected such an advanced brain would have evolved so early in the history of multicellular animals.' [...]

 

The discovery, which is reported in the October edition of the journal Nature, suggests insect brains evolved from a previously complex structure to a more simple one, rather than the other way round, researchers said.

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