By D. Maan, Jadetimes News
X rays unlock remarkable details of tiny half billion year old creature.
Researchers have uncovered the internal anatomy of a prehistoric creature no larger than a poppy seed in "astonishing detail" with the use of powerful X rays. Scanning revealed its microscopic blood vessels and nervous system, preserved for 520 million years, which were published in the journal *Nature*. The finding presented a very rare look inside the body of one of the earliest ancestors of modern insects, spiders, and crabs.
According to the lead researcher, Dr. Martin Smith, the condition of this fossil left him "stunned." He added that it had captured the animal at its larval stage in life, when body shape is still developing. "Looking at these early stages really is the key to understanding how those adult body shapes are formed not just through evolution but through development," he explained. He said this was because larvae were usually too small and fragile to fossilize.
It came from the half-billion year old rock deposits of northern China known for containing microscopic fossils. Dr. Smith's colleagues found it in a pile of "prehistoric grit," which was dissolved in acid to extract tiny fossils. For years, technicians at Yunnan University sifted through the material to pick out fossils from the dust.
It was on a visit to China that Dr Smith realised the importance of the specimen and requested to take it back to the UK for a closer look. The team mounted the fossil onto the head of a pin and then scanned it with powerful X rays at Oxford's Diamond Light Source facility, showing its internal structures.
"When I saw the amazing structures preserved under its skin, my jaw just dropped," Dr. Smith said. Detailed three dimensional images of the creature's miniaturised brain regions, digestive glands, primitive circulatory system, and even traces of the nerves supplying its legs and eyes were made by the team. A segmented brain cavity revealed the ancestral beginnings of the specialized, segmented heads of modern insects, spiders, and crabs.
According to one of the study's co authors, Dr. Katherine Dobson from the University of Strathclyde, this was nearly perfectly preserved through natural fossilization. Dr. Smith attributed this to a high concentration of phosphorus in the ocean where the larva lived and died. The phosphorus washed into the oceans from eroded land rocks crystallized the tiny body and preserved it for millions of years.
This is a remarkable discovery, providing insight not only into early development and evolution but also into what modern imaging techniques can give for unraveling secrets from our planet's distant past.
