Preserved human brains may not be as rare as thought

Research papers often describe human brain fossils as exceptionally rare. But a new study that amasses data from thousands of preserved brains suggests that's not the case. In this trove, scientists have identified five processes that preserve this soft tissue, in some cases up to 12,000 years ( Proc. R. Soc. B 2024, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.2606 ). "Everyone decays differently and different parts of the body decay differently," says Alexandra Morton-Hayward , a forensic anthropologist at the University of Oxford. In previous work as an undertaker and embalmer, Morton-Hayward saw that human brains usually liquefied within days. But as she came across reports of preserved brains in the archaeological record, she questioned whether these samples were actually rare. Morton-Hayward and her colleagues searched 400 years of literature for archaeological reports of discolored, shrunken brains. They paired records of 4,405 brains from 213 sources with information about the conditions the specimens were