Paleontologists have just discovered the world’s oldest-known petrified, fossilized sperm.
The sperm dates to at least 16–17 million years ago and was found in a near-perfect state of preservation. The researchers often use one word to describe it: “giant.”
“The animal that produced these giant sperm belongs to the class of Ostracoda, or mussel shrimp,” lead author Renate Matzke-Karasz, a paleontologist at the Ludwig-Maximiliian University and Geo-Bio Center, he went on to explain that these hearty animals and their relatives have been on Earth for at least 500 million years.
