Bees take lead from eyes of old

An exquisitely well preserved 429-million-year-old eye from a marine creature had vision comparable to modern-day bees.

An exquisitely well preserved 429-million-year-old eye from a marine creature that went ­extinct before dinosaurs even existed had vision comparable to modern-day bees and dragonflies, researchers say.

Fossilised trilobites, formidable-looking arthropods with segmented bodies and sturdy exoskeletons, are found all over the world.

The creatures crawled across seabeds during the ­Paleozoic era, which came to and end about 252 million years ago. The specimen detailed in the journal Scientific Reports is just 1mm-2mm high and has two protruding semi-oval eyes on the back of its head, one of which had broken off.

Using digital microscopy, researchers from Germany and Britain found internal structures remarkably similar to those of the compound eyes of modern insects and crustaceans, which see through a honeycomb of small lenses each with a separate visual unit that takes in a small patch of light. The trilobite in question was discovered in 1846 in what is now the Czech Republic.

AFP