Researchers at UC Berkley exploited an interesting property of extant species of the mollusk genus Conus. Apparently, the patterns on the shells of these little buggers is a reflection of activity patterns in their neurons.
The researchers model the creation of the shell pigment patterns and use them to extrapolate information about the neural networks of ancestral, fossilized species (the neural network is not observable in fossils), the phylogeny of Conus, and the evolution of shell patterns.
This paper also features the quote:
half a Mexican hat backward in time
You will have to read the paper to find out what this means, which you can actually do, because this article was published Open Access.
The Finch and Pea 