Scientists Find World's Oldest Sperm in Myanmar Amber
Phoenix666 writes:
A team of paleontologists has discovered what they believe is the world's oldest animal sperm, frozen inside a tiny crustacean in a blob of tree resin in Myanmar 100 million years ago.
The oldest known examples of fossilised animal sperm were previously a mere 17 million years old, according to the team of experts led by Wang He of the Chinese Academy of Science in Nanjing.
The sperm were found inside an ostracod, a kind of crustacean that has existed for 500 million years and can be found in many oceans today, researchers said in a paper published on Wednesday in the prestigious Royal Society's Proceedings journal.
The specimen was found inside the body of a fertilized female.
Journal Reference:
He Wang, Renate Matzke-Karasz, David J. Horne, et al. Exceptional preservation of reproductive organs and giant sperm in Cretaceous ostracods, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.1661)
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.