"Brain and Brain. What is Brain?"

According to a story in USA Today, the oldest fossilized brain has been found in Kansas (probably not ancestral to the brains of the people in the Kansas State School Board) that is 300 million years old. The brain belongs to an iniopterygian, an ancestor of the modern ratfishes. The author writes:

"Fossilized brains are unusual, and this is by far the oldest known example," said John Maisey, curator in the division of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

"Soft tissue has fossilized in the past, but it is usually muscle and organs like kidneys," Maisey said in a statement.

Neat.