小柯机器人

英国自然历史博物馆Sam Giles等研人员合作揭示辐鳍鱼大脑的罕见化石保存和演化。该研究于2023年2月1日在线发表于国际一流学术期刊《自然》。

研究人员报告了一种大约3.19亿年前的辐鳍鱼Coccocephalus wildi的大脑和脑神经软组织保存。这个保存完好的脊椎动物大脑的例子为辐鳍鱼系统发育的深层神经解剖提供了一扇窗口。Coccocephalus表明了一种比仅由现存物种所表明的更为复杂的大脑演化模式，突出了分支的异形现象，并为联合所有现存辐鳍鱼特征的起源提供了时间限制。这些发现，以及在其他动物群体中越来越多的研究，都指出了古代软组织保存对于理解骨骼组织狭窄子集之外主要解剖系统的深层演化组合的重要性。

据悉，大脑解剖为辐鳍鱼之间的关系提供了关键证据，但两大局限性模糊了人们对这一主要脊椎动物类群神经解剖学演化的理解。首先，最深分支的生物谱系与该群体的共同祖先分离了数亿年，有迹象表明，它们大脑形态的某些方面相对于原始条件是专门的，这就像它们解剖学的其他方面一样。其次，在最早的辐鳍鱼中，除了颅骨内窥镜提供的粗略图像之外，没有任何直接的限制大脑形态的因素：颅骨内空洞空间的自然或虚拟填充。

附：英文原文

Title: Exceptional fossil preservation and evolution of the ray-finned fish brain

Author: Figueroa, Rodrigo T., Goodvin, Danielle, Kolmann, Matthew A., Coates, Michael I., Caron, Abigail M., Friedman, Matt, Giles, Sam

Issue&Volume: 2023-02-01

Abstract: Brain anatomy provides key evidence for the relationships between ray-finned fishes1, but two major limitations obscure our understanding of neuroanatomical evolution in this major vertebrate group. First, the deepest branching living lineages are separated from the group’s common ancestor by hundreds of millions of years, with indications that aspects of their brain morphology—like other aspects of their anatomy2,3—are specialized relative to primitive conditions. Second, there are no direct constraints on brain morphology in the earliest ray-finned fishes beyond the coarse picture provided by cranial endocasts: natural or virtual infillings of void spaces within the skull4,5,6,7,8. Here we report brain and cranial nerve soft-tissue preservation in Coccocephalus wildi, an approximately 319-million-year-old ray-finned fish. This example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain provides a window into neural anatomy deep within ray-finned fish phylogeny. Coccocephalus indicates a more complicated pattern of brain evolution than suggested by living species alone, highlighting cladistian apomorphies1 and providing temporal constraints on the origin of traits uniting all extant ray-finned fishes1,9. Our findings, along with a growing set of studies in other animal groups10,11,12, point to the importance of ancient soft tissue preservation in understanding the deep evolutionary assembly of major anatomical systems outside of the narrow subset of skeletal tissues13,14,15.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05666-1

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05666-1

Nature：《自然》，创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：69.504
官方网址：http://www.nature.com/
投稿链接：http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html