Scientists Discover Oldest - And Biggest Sperm
http://www.designntrend.com/articles/13930/20140514/scientists-discover-oldest-and-biggest-sperm.htm
The science world has come across something undeniably disgusting - it looks like angel hair pasta, it's gigantic, it's cocooned in bat poop and - it's the world's oldest sperm, writes The Washington Post.
In 1988, a team of Australian paleontologists discovered a fossil cave inside Australia's vast Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil Site in northern Queensland, writes The Washington Post.
At the time, researchers thought the most interesting part was the millions bat fossils contained in the cave.
Bat bones, bat skulls, bat teeth and loads of bat guano.
"It was filled with these wonderful bat fossils," paleontologist Michael Archer, onetime director of the Australian Museum, told The Washington Post in a phone interview.
"Bats are fascinating, too, and we thought that was all the game was."
But, as with most discoveries - there was more to the story. As it turns out the limestone contained soft tissue of an ancient shrimp known as an ostracod.
The soft tissue was not just any kind of tissue - but perfectly preserved giant sperm, aged 17 million years, writes The Washington Post.
"These are the oldest fossilized sperm ever found in the geological record," said Archer, co-author of a study published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
"It's staggering."
However, the size of the shrimp sperm is even more staggering.
The ostracod is a miniscule animal- measuring only about 1 millimeter long - and proportionally, its sperm are huge.
The uncoiled sperm can be "can reach up to ten times the body length of its producer," according to Science Daily.
"No one knows why ostracods have giant sperm or how they originated," David Horne of Britain's Queen Mary University of London told USA Today, calling the fossils "amazing."
"The new evidence that they have been around for millions of years only adds to the mystery."
Researchers found the sperm inside the reproductive tract of a fossilized female shrimp.
"The sperm was clearly wound up in knots within this weird 'zenker' organ, balled up like a ball of string, then literally shot at and into a female and the female catches it. It's like they were playing catch," Archer said in a statement.
"It kind of makes you feel like a dirty Peeping Tom for finding them in the middle of the act."
But that adds even more mystery to the discovery, scientists say.
This fossil commemorates "ancient sex with gargantuan sperm," researcher Renate Matzke-Karasz of Germany's Ludwig-Maximilian-University told USA Today - sex immediately before the ostracods were fossilized.
It is unclear what caused the immediate fossilization.
"We don't know how the instantaneous fossilization happened." Archer said.
"But that we don't know what happened is part of the fun."
Archer said he does not know for sure how the soft tissue fossil was nearly perfectly preserved for such an immense period of time - but he believes the bat poop could be responsible.
Years ago, a similar discovery involving a fossilized frog "that still looked gooey" was made in France.
Archer said bat guano may have also had a hand in the preservation of that fossil.
"It's some process related to bat poo," he said.
"It's that magic ingredient somewhere in it. One day, some student is going to identify it, and someone is going to put it into face cream to combat aging."