2,000-year-old brain found in Britain

A computerized view shows contracted brain tissue at top. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

LONDON - British archeologists have unearthed an ancient skull carrying a startling surprise: an unusually well-preserved brain.

Scientists said yesterday that the brain was more than 2,000 years old, the oldest ever discovered in Britain. Chris Gosden, a professor of archeology at Oxford University who was not connected with the find, called it "a real freak of preservation."

The skull was severed from its owner sometime before the Roman invasion of Britain and found in a muddy pit during a dig at the University of York in northern England this fall, according to Richard Hall, a director of the York Archeological Trust.

Finds officer Rachel Cubbitt felt something move inside the cranium as she was cleaning it, Hall said. She looked through the skull's base and spotted a yellow substance inside. Scans at York Hospital confirmed the presence of brain tissue.

Hall said it was unclear just how much of the brain had survived, saying the tissue had apparently contracted over the years. Parts of the brain have been tentatively identified, but more research was needed, he said.

He said it was a mystery why the skull was buried separately from the body, suggesting human sacrifice and ritual burial as possible explanations.

The existence of a brain where no other soft tissues have survived is extremely rare, according to Sonia O'Connor, an archeological researcher at the University of Bradford in northern England who helped authenticate the discovery. She called it the oldest recorded find of its type in the United Kingdom and one of the earliest worldwide.

ASSOCIATED PRESS