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  • Nautilus

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

    by Amy Maxmen May 21, 2014 3 minutes

    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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