Researchers Identify Fossilized Brain Tissue for the First Time

A brown pebble has been identified by researchers as the fossilized brain tissue of a dinosaur.  The is the first time that fossilized brain tissue has been identified.  The results were reported in a Special Publication of the Geological Society of London.   The research was coordinated by Professor Martin Brasier of the University of Oxford and Dr. David Norman of the University of Cambridge.

Aside from Prof. Brasier and Dr. Norman, other co-authors of the published article include Dr Alex Liu of Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences, who was a PhD student of Prof. Brasier at the start of their research,  and Jamie Hiscocks, the man who discovered the specimen near Bexhill in Sussex in 2004.  The research was funded in part by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Christ's College, Cambridge.  The article was published in tribute to Prof. Brasier who died in 2014 in a road traffic accident.

The brain tissue is most probably from a dinosaur species that is related to Iguanadon, a large herbivorous dinosaur that lived about 133 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous.

The discovery of the specimen had astonished the researchers since it is incredibly rare for soft tissue, such as brain tissue, to be fossilized.  In fact, brain tissue has an extremely small chance of being preserved.  The brain tissues were preserved because the dinosaur died in or near a body of water and its head ended up partially buried in the sediment at the bottom.  The acidity and lack of oxygen in the water helped preserve the brain tissue before the rest of the body was buried in the sediment.

Using a scanning electron microscope with the help of colleagues from the University of Western Australia, researchers could identify meninges, the tough membranes that surrounded the brain, as well as strands of collagen and blood vessels.  It showed that the brain had similarities with the brains of birds and crocodiles.  What the researchers could not conclude though from this individual specimen was the actual size of the brain of the dinosaur.