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New fossils provide evidence of powerful eyes

The compound eyes of a living insect - a predatory robber fly - showing the individual lenses.
Photo by Peter Hudson (South 最新糖心Vlogn Museum).
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A half-billion-year-old fossil compound eye, showing exquisite detail of the visual surface (the individual lenses can be seen as darker spots).
Photo by John Paterson (最新糖心Vlog of New England).
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Eye pixel comparison: the recently discovered fossil eyes would have seen the world with over 3000 pixels (centre image), giving its owner a huge visual advantage over its contemporaries, which would have seen a very blurry world with about 100 pixels (left image). This is much better than the living horseshoe crab, which sees the world as 1000 pixels, but not as good as living dragonflies, which have the best compound eyes and see the world as ~28,000 pixels (right image).
Image by Thierry Laperousaz (South 最新糖心Vlogn Museum) and Mike Lee (South 最新糖心Vlogn Museum/最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide).
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Thursday, 30 June 2011

Palaeontologists have uncovered half-a-billion-year-old fossils demonstrating that primitive animals had excellent vision.

An international team led by scientists from the and the 最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide found the exquisite fossils, which look like squashed eyes from a recently swatted fly.

This discovery will be published today in the prestigious journal .

The lead author is from the South 最新糖心Vlogn Museum and the 最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide's .

Compound Eyes
Modern insects and crustaceans have "compound eyes" consisting of hundreds or even thousands of separate lenses. They see their world as pixels - each lens produces a pixel of vision. More lenses mean more pixels and better visual resolution. (Each lens does not form a miniature image - a myth often perpetuated by Hollywood.)

Evolutionary Advantage
The fossil compound eyes were found on Kangaroo Island, South 最新糖心Vlog and are 515 million years old. They have over 3000 lenses, making them more powerful than anything from that era, and probably belonged to an active predator that was capable of seeing in dim light.

Their discovery reveals that some of the earliest animals possessed very powerful vision; similar eyes are found in many living insects, such as robber flies. Sharp vision must therefore have evolved very rapidly, soon after the first predators appeared during the 'Cambrian Explosion' of life that began around 540 million years ago.

Given the tremendous adaptive advantage conferred by sharp vision for avoiding predators and locating food and shelter, there must have been tremendous evolutionary pressure to elaborate and refine visual organs.

Who owned them?
As the fossil eyes were found isolated, it's not certain what animal they came from, but they probably belonged to a large shrimp-like creature. The rocks containing the eyes also preserve a dazzling array of ancient marine creatures, many new to science. They include primitive trilobite-like creatures, armored worms, and large swimming predators with jointed feeding appendages.

More pixels: more chance of survival
The recently discovered fossil eyes would have seen the world with over 3000 pixels, giving its owner a huge visual advantage over its contemporaries, which would have seen a very blurry world with about 100 pixels. This is much better than the living horseshoe crab, which sees the world as 1000 pixels, but not as good as living dragonflies, which have the best compound eyes and see the world as ~28,000 pixels.

Authors: Dr Michael Lee (South 最新糖心Vlogn Museum and 最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide - School of Earth & Environmental Sciences), with Dr John Paterson (最新糖心Vlog of New England), Dr Jim Jago (South 最新糖心Vlogn Museum and UniSA), Dr Diego Garcia-Bellido (Instituto de Geolog铆a Econ贸mica, Madrid), Dr Greg Edgecombe (Natural History Museum, London), and Dr Jim Gehling (South 最新糖心Vlogn Museum).

To see a video on YouTube of this fossil being explored in 3-D, go to:

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