This ‘brown pebble’ found by a fossil hunter in Sussex more than a decade ago has been confirmed as the first known example of dinosaur brain tissue.
The brain is thought to have belonged to a species closely related to the Iguanodon, a large plant-eating dinosaur that lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 133 million years ago, and has many features in common with the brains of modern day crocodiles and birds.
Finding fossilised soft tissue, especially brain tissue, is very rare due to the conditions required to create it. The researchers say this piece is so well preserved as it was ‘pickled’ in an acidic, oxygen-deprived body of water shortly after its death, causing the soft tissue to become mineralised.
This story is from the February 2016 edition of BBC Earth.
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This story is from the February 2016 edition of BBC Earth.
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