Nature Communications (Mar 2018)

Brain and eyes of Kerygmachela reveal protocerebral ancestry of the panarthropod head

  • Tae-Yoon S. Park,
  • Ji-Hoon Kihm,
  • Jusun Woo,
  • Changkun Park,
  • Won Young Lee,
  • M. Paul Smith,
  • David A. T. Harper,
  • Fletcher Young,
  • Arne T. Nielsen,
  • Jakob Vinther

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03464-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

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The arthropod head is complex and its evolution has been difficult to reconstruct. Here, Park et al. describe new specimens of the Cambrian stem-group euarthropod Kerygmachela that preserve evidence of primitive compound eyes and a unipartite brain, providing insight into the structure of the early arthropod head.