Dr Javier Ortega-Hernández of the University of Cambridge, UK, has discovered one of the oldest fossil brains ever found, and used it to help identify a key point in the evolutionary transition from soft to hard bodies in early ancestors of arthropods. Odaraia alata, a large swimming arthropod with a pair of bulbous eyes and a tubular carapace open ventrally. Image credit: Jean Bernard Caron, Royal Ontario Museum. Dr Ortega-Hernández looked at two...
