Free Republic

What Does It Take to Fossilize a Brain? by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Scientists have accidently discovered a rare and perhaps unique fossilized brain of an iniopterygian, an extinct kind of ratfish or chimaera that supposedly lived 300 million years ago. When the researchers scanned the fossilized skull of the iniopterygian with advanced imaging techniques at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, nobody expected to see a brain.1 British naturalist Charles Darwin predicted that “no organism wholly soft can be preserved.”2 Yet here was fossilized soft tissue. How could this be? One hypothesis is that the environment in which the fish...

SEATTLE - There may never be a campaign to save the Puget Sound ratfish; no one really loves the ugly fish with rodent-like front teeth. But when a rare albino ratfish was found during a marine survey this past summer, scientists decided it was time to educate the public about the most abundant fish in local waters. The cartilaginous cousin of skates and rays is usually brown or black with white spots so it can blend in with the bottom of the sound, where it uses its rat-like teeth to crush clams, crabs and worms scooped up from the sand...

SEATTLE - A Federal Way, Wash., girl on a fishing trip with her family reeled in something right out of a science fiction film. Believe it or not, she caught a two-footed fish with a big horn. 8-year-old Otilia Grasan was fishing with her family this week when she caught the strangest fish she had ever seen. “I was thinking that it might be a good pet and put it in the fish tank,” said Otilia. "When it came up in the water the eyes were really glowing and the whole tail was glowing too. So I thought it was...