[1] It was discovered by German scientist Gustav Fritsch in 1878 in the brains of sharks, and was first found in humans in 1913.

It first appears bilaterally as a microscopic plexus of unmyelinated peripheral nerve fibers in the subarachnoid space covering the straight gyrus.

The plexus appears near the cribriform plate and travels posteriorly toward the olfactory trigone and lamina terminalis.

[3] The terminal nerve is clearly seen in the human embryo but loses some of its ganglion cells before birth making it less recognizable in adults.

[1] This hypothesis is further supported by the fact that the terminal nerve projects to the medial and lateral septal nuclei and the preoptic areas, all of which are involved in reproduction in mammals.