520-Million-Year-Old Brains Preserved in Fool's Gold in China

Fossils found in southwest China reveals 520-million-year-old brains and some were preserved in fool's gold.

The brains belong to shrimplike creatures just a few centimeters long named Fuxianhuia protensa, which scuttled around the seafloor during the Cambrian Period. Before this time, most life on Earth was very simple; during the Cambrian, life exploded in diversity and complexity.

The research clarified that soft tissue like that in the brain could survive for half a billion years in fossil form. The brain fossils appear as black shadows on otherwise yellowish fossils, the researchers wrote. 

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