After a person dies, the brain is usually the first organ to deteriorate, turning to liquid rather quickly. But in certain cases, brain tissue is preserved and found hundreds or even thousands of years later. Science has found 4,400 brains that were preserved after burial, representing only a tiny fraction of the dead who are disinterred in the name of science. The reasons for brain preservation are dehydration, freezing, saponification, and tanning. But these causes apply to the whole body. Some brains are found preserved when the rest of the soft tissue in the body is long gone, and we don't know why.
Alexandra Morton-Hayward is an undertaker who became a palaeobiologist at the University of Oxford. She is part of a research team looking into the brains that continue to exist when the rest of the body's flesh doesn't, and it's her job to collect these brains and keep them in refrigerators. Some of them are still soft and wet, hundreds of years after their owner died. It's a morbid but fascinating task you can read about at Atlas Obscura. -via Strange Company
(Image credit:Alexandra L. Morton-Hayward)