exozoology:

rhamphotheca:

Sex? It all started 385 million years ago

It may not have been love as we know it, but around 385 million years ago, our very distant ancestors—armoured fish called placoderms—developed the art of intercourse.

So suggest a team of evolutionary scientists, who point to the fossil of a placoderm species blessed with the name of Microbrachius dicki.

Measuring about eight centimetres (four inches) in length, M. dicki lived in habitats in modern-day Scotland—where the first specimen was found in 1888—and in Estonia and China.

Placoderms have previously been found to be the most primitive jawed animal—the earliest known vertebrate forerunner of humans.But they now have an even more honoured…

(read more: PhysOrg)

illustration: Dr. Brian Choo/Flinders Univ.

So my Facebook newsfeed is filled with posts about this and people commenting that “Scots invented sex”! Which reminded me of this book called How the Scots Invented the Modern World! Fitting ;)

A somewhat more accurate answer to the literal meaning of “old as fuck”. (As I recall, that previous post used the specialisation of gamete types to define “fuck”.)

Tags:

#the more you know #the power of science #biology #history