51�Թ�

Researchers generated three-dimensional images of miniature brain regions, digestive glands, a primitive circulatory system and even traces of the nerves supplying the larva’s simple legs and eyes.

The parasite infects connective tissue and produces spores inside digestive glands, eventually killing the bivalves.

But the presence of both a crop and digestive glands, Hopkins and colleagues write, means that the evolution of trilobite innards was more complex than previously supposed. 

Do you eat the crab “mustard” or do you toss the pale-yellow digestive gland?

Well technically, it’s the tomalley—a digestive gland that’s the intestine, liver, and pancreas.