Suspicious minds: a molecular taphonomic approach to preservation of the central nervous system in the archaeological and fossil records

考古学家已经出土了1800多个人脑，并在寒武纪时期的化石中发现了390多个可能的神经组织。这些保存下来的神经组织为研究已灭绝的类群的古生物学和进化史提供了独特的见解；例如，后生动物早期辐射期间化学和电信号系统(神经前体)的发展。然而，腐烂实验表明，中枢神经系统(CNS)是最早在死后分解的器官之一，目前还没有已知的化石路径来解释它们的保存。是什么使得中枢神经系统比其他更耐腐烂的软组织能够得到特殊的保存？Taphonomy是一门研究有机物如何从生物圈转移到岩石圈的学科，它认识到化石软组织的化学对于阐明保存过程至关重要；然而，1%的古代大脑已经在分子水平上进行了研究。该项目将从古代和实验腐烂的神经组织中生成一个综合的多组学和矿物学数据集，以探索中枢神经系统在考古和化石记录中保存的方法。

Over 1800 human brains have been unearthed by archaeologists, and more than 390 putative neural tissues have been identified in fossils as old as the Cambrian Period. These preserved neural tissues provide unique insights into the palaeobiology and evolutionary history of extinct taxa; for example, the development of chemical and electrical signalling systems (neural precursors) during the early radiation of metazoa. However, decay experiments suggest that the central nervous system (CNS) is amongst the first organs to decompose post-mortem, and there is no known pathway to fossilisation accounting for their preservation. What permits the exceptional preservation of the CNS over other, more decay-resistant soft tissues?Taphonomy, the study of how organic matter passes from the biosphere to the lithosphere, recognises that the chemistry of fossil soft tissues is critical for elucidating preservation processes; yet <1% of ancient brains have been investigated at the molecular level. This project will generate an integrated multi-omic and mineralogical dataset from ancient and experimentally-decayed neural tissues to explore the means by which the CNS preserves in the archaeological and fossil records.