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There’s a questionable distinction in the fossil record: For the first time, a vertebrate has been found with lumps of feces where its brain once stood.

The fossilized animal was Astroscopus countermani, an extinct fish. First identified as a separate species in Maryland in 2011. Also known as a stargazer because its eyes are above its head, it was the earliest known member of its family and genus and still hunts prey on seafloors all over the world. But about 7.5 million to 10.5 million years ago, during the Miocene, scientists suspect that this stargazer specimen, which may have been the size of today’s trout, died out, and its pallium may have been infiltrated by polychaetes or another type of annelid worm. The creatures may have cleaned the brains of the dead fish, leaving plenty of excrement behind.

“It was,” said Stephen J. Godfrey, curator of paleontology at the Calvert Maritime Museum in Maryland and author of the study, “an overly successful worm or worms that got into this little fish!”

Although the stargazer fossil is not a new find, the authors have more recently been able to use advanced technology to examine the inside of both the brain sheath and fossilized pellets without destroying them. In an article published In the journal Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia in JanuaryIn , scientists describe using a spectroscopic device to confirm the calcium and phosphate signatures of coprolites (fossilized feces) in the fish’s cerebral cortex.

Dr. Godfrey says it’s extraordinary that such a small fish survived fossilization. But it is equally remarkable that the tightly packed coprolites in the cerebral cortex have also been preserved. That means no other ex-scavengers who won’t have dung balls following these worms to their lunch.

The Calvert Cliffs, where the fossil was found, stretch 35 miles along the coast of Maryland. Known for its voluminous and diverse fossil content, the site has so far produced fossils of 650 different ancient organisms. These include evidence of creatures entering fossilized remains, shark fossils with shark bite marks on them, shark bite coprolites, and whale fossils showing they were swept away. John Nance, co-author and director of paleontology collections at the Calvert Maritime Museum, found numerous trace fossils on the beaches next to these cliffs, many of which are discussed in the recent article.

But the microcoprolites described in this paper proved particularly attractive for study. Dr. Godfrey and his co-authors recorded their uniform shape and size. Similar fecal pellets have been found much deeper in the fossil record. trilobite heads It is older than 450 million years.

“We don’t know the identity of the producers of these pellets, but we do know that their behavior was quite successful,” said Alberto Collareta, a co-author and paleontologist at the University of Pisa. In other words, microcoprolites of the same type and shape have been found in similar narrow spaces for hundreds of millions of years.

While large fossils are of great interest in paleontology, “fossils of small organisms often have more to say,” said Aline Ghilardi, a professor of paleontology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil, who was not involved in the research. .

He says the smaller creatures and what they leave behind (burrows or bodily waste) can provide detailed stories about environmental changes over time.

“Each fossil species has a different story to tell, and these stories complement each other, helping us reconstruct a more accurate picture of the past,” he said. “Paleontologists need all these pieces to reconstruct life history.”