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Here's a brainteaser: Do the 520-million-year-old fossils of an ancient, bug-like creature actually show a silhouette of its brains? Or are these blobby shapes in its head merely fossilized bacteria? According to a new study, the fossilized structures in the Cambrian-period creature's head aren't brainy remains, but rather fossilized bacterial mats, called biofilms. However, not everyone is on board with this interpretation. The researchers who originally discovered the brains are standing by their results, and other paleontologists Live Science interviewed agree with them. [Fabulous Fossils: Gallery of Earliest Animal Organs] The creature in question, Fuxianhuia protensa, is an early arthropod,...

Three years ago, a team of scientists rocked the paleontology world by reporting that they'd recovered flexible tissue resembling blood vessels from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur fossil... Subsequent analyses by many of the same scientists -- including Mary H. Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh -- indicated that the fossil contained small bits of collagen, a fiber-forming protein that's the largest non-mineral component of bone... Schweitzer and her colleagues, of course, take issue with the new findings. "There really isn't a lot new here, although I really welcome that someone is attempting to look at and repeat...

· Technique renders pathogens benign· Crop and animal diseases could also be targeted Scientists have taken a big step towards a new generation of antibiotics by designing compounds that stop bacteria "talking to each other", thwarting their ability to spread infection. The revolutionary approach renders bacteria benign rather than killing them off, and comes as many antibiotics are losing their potency against pathogens which have developed drug resistance.Tests showed the compounds actively blocked the spread of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common bacterium which causes fatal lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis and leads to life-threatening blood infections in patients with...