Nautilus

Evolution May Be Drunk, But It’s Serious About Making Brains

A new study shows that the comb jelly Pleurobrachia bachei evolved its complex features, including neurons and muscles, separately from animals like us.Leonid Moroz and Mat Citarella

Our brains, perched atop a network of nerve cells that ascend the length of our bodies, are thought to have arisen once in an animal hundreds of millions of years ago and then evolved over time. However, new findings suggest instead that brains and nervous systems originated multiple times from scratch.

The findings, published today in highlight an

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