Fishy Old Brains

An X-ray has helped scientists see an extinct fish’s fossilized brain, thought to be the oldest-ever brain found. Because the brain is soft tissue mostly made up of water, the fact that the brain was fossilized is surprising: “To preserve [any brain tissue] is quite remarkable,” said paleontologist John Maisey of the American Museum of Natural History.

“‘Sex’ was far more common in these primitive prehistoric animals."

Even though related to sharks, the fish was tiny, small enough to have fit in a human palm. The brain is correspondingly tiny, about the size of a pea, albeit with a large lobe for vision. Maisey calls it a “very puzzling fish . . . really, really bizarre.”

For us, this is just further evidence of the work of a catastrophe that buried the fish rapidly.

Speaking of fossil fish, BBC News reports on a fossil fish from Australia that is among the “earliest” (in evolutionary terms) to show evidence of fertilization. This confounds evolutionists, who expected fertilization to take place outside the female’s body in such “primitive” fish.

“We expected that these early fishes would show a more primitive type of reproduction, where sperm and eggs combine in the water and embryos develop outside the fish,” explained fossil fish curator Zerina Johanson of London’s Natural History Museum.

Johanson added, “‘Sex’ was far more common in these primitive prehistoric animals. We used to think that external fertilization was the earliest form of reproduction but copulation appears to be the main way they reproduced.”

While evolutionists must accept this as a “fact” of the fossil record, to creationists, it makes absolute sense. Kinds that reproduce sexually did so from the beginning, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to find evidence of sexual reproduction throughout the fossil record in sexually reproducing kinds.