X-rays reveal half-billion-year-old insect ancestor
Dr Smith’s colleagues found the fossil in a pile of “prehistoric grit” during a study of half-billion-year-old rock deposits in the north of China known to contain microscopic fossils.
“Our collaborators in China have large amounts of this stuff, which they dissolve it in acid and these little bits fall out,” Dr Smith said.
A team of technicians at Yunnan University spent years sifting through the material and picking fossils out of the dust.
After examining this particular specimen under the microscope during a trip to China, Dr Smith said, he had realised it was “something very special” and asked if he could bring it back to the UK to have a closer look.
The team mounted the fossil on the head of a pin in order to scan it with intense X-rays at Oxford’s Diamond Light Source, external facility. That is where its internal secrets were revealed.
“When I saw the amazing structures preserved under its skin, my jaw just dropped,” Dr Smith said.
Researchers generated three-dimensional images of miniature brain regions, digestive glands, a primitive circulatory system and even traces of the nerves supplying the larva’s simple legs and eyes.
