What evolved first: the eye or optic nerve?

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I’ve always wondered how eyes evolved.

You need an optic nerve to transmit the info to the brain, but why would we evolve eyes without that, or an optic nerve without eyes. What purpose would it serve?

Maybe a random mutation led to eyes that were useless till then a nerve evolved like a million years later?

Or they both happened at the same time over a million years or so?

In: Biology

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I would guess it’s the optic nerve, which would have been a way to sense light through the skin. As time passed I would guess the eye developed as an evolving improvement on the light sensor. I doubt there’s good evidence of the early evolution process because of how soft the tissue is. Once the skull developed recessions for the eye, then we would start seeing it in the fossil records.

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