Well preserved sperm dating back 100 million years has been discovered trapped in amber.
The sperm which is roughly 50 million years older than the previously oldest fossil record belonged to an ostracod – a class of small crustaceans that have been present for around 450 million years.
The sperm was found in modern-day Myanmar.
According to the fossil record, the behavior of modern ostracod, the male used their fifth limb to transfer extraordinarily long but immotile sperm into the female.
The sperm was super big too, being around 4.6 times the length of the female’s body.
“This is equivalent to about 7.3m (23ft) in a 1.7m (5.5ft) human,” said Dr. Renate Matzke-Karasz of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Unfortunately, the two little ritters were covered by tree resin while in the throes of passion.
This resin fossilized into amber, preserving not just the lovers but several other ostracods.
Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Science used X-rays to obtain high-resolution images of the remarkably well-preserved soft parts of the ostracods.
The images gave direct evidence of the male clasper, the sperm pumps, the hemipenes as well as the female eggs and seminal receptacles which had the giant sperm.
Funnily, researchers discovered that the sexual behavior in ostracods which has a huge number of morphological adaptations has remained unchanged over the past 100 million years.
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Dr. Matzke-Karasz noted that there are various conflicting theories about the evolutionary value of such long sperm.
“For example, experiments have shown that in one group, a high degree of competition between males can lead to a longer sperm life, while in another group, a low degree of competition also led to a longer sperm life,” she added.
Regardless of the mechanism, the research revealed “that reproduction with giant sperm is not an evolutionary extravagance on the brink of extinction, but a serious long-term advantage for the survival of a species,” Dr. Matzke-Karasz concluded.
