ABOVE: STUCK IN AMBER: The record-setting sperm was found in a new ostracod species called Myanmarcypris hui.
HE WANG & XIANGDONG ZHAO, NANJING UNIVERSITY
The paper
H. Wang et al., “Exceptional preservation of reproductive organs and giant sperm in Cretaceous ostracods,” Proc R Soc B, 287:20201661, 2020.
Something giant lingers in a tiny piece of amber the size of a postage stamp. It’s the world’s oldest sperm, and it’s relatively big—nearly five times longer than the creature from which it came.
The sperm dates back 100 million years and belongs to an ancient ostracod, a relative of millimeter-long crustaceans still alive today. It’s almost 50 million years older than the previously catalogued oldest sperm, according to Nanjing University paleontologists He Wang and Bo Wang, who studied it.
Timing was key to the perfect preservation of the sperm, which is rarely fossilized. The researchers found a tangled clump of sperm and four tiny ...
