Oldest Known Penis Is 100 Million Years Old Fri Sep 13,11:45 AM ET LEICESTER, England (Reuters) - Sex was first recognized in the fossil records more than 500 million years ago and the oldest known penis is about 100 million years old, a conference heard on Friday. It belongs to an ostracod, an early crustacean related to crabs, shrimps and water fleas, and was found in a fossil sample unearthed in Brazil. "To my knowledge it is the oldest penis. I don't know of any older," Professor David Siveter, of the University of Leicester, told the British Association science conference. Dinosaurs were around 100 million years ago but the only known dinosaur fossils are of bones, not soft tissue. In fact the ostracod fossil had not one penis but two. Siveter, an expert in paleontology, believes ostracods are very sexy animals because they have the second longest sperm in the animal kingdom. A one millimeter ostracod can produce a single sperm 10 millimeters long. "An ostracod has the longest sperm to body ratio of any animal known to man, so clearly it has to have special equipment to deal with the sperm. It doesn't have one penis, it has two. We found the two penises in a 100 million year old fossil," he said. By studying gender and sexuality and how far it goes back in the fossil record, Siveter said scientists can learn more about how animal reproduction evolved and behavioral traits. In a separate presentation, Professor Scott Sampson of the University of Utah Museum of Natural History in the United States said that dinosaurs probably used their enormous horns, pikes, plates and crests to attract the opposite sex, in a similar way that peacocks use their colorful array of feathers. Some of the appendages were used as weapons but Sampson said others were simply not strong enough to be useful against an enemy and like deer or antelope they used the horns to impress potential mates. "I think the evidence is quite strong that dinosaurs did too," he said. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=570&e=2&u=/nm/20020913/sc_nm/science_penis_dc
Oh my god, that was soooo long ago, let it go brotha. This makes me never want to post again in this forum.
represent! This guy is teaching vert paleo this spring. Too bad I have to take a bunch of real classes. j/k. It does remind me, of how last spring in vert osteo, when I asked a few of the geology grad students (I was taking the course through anthro) if there were any interesting vert paleo classes being taught. They told me about a few of Sampson's classes. I thought they were just randomly pointing me towards dinosaur classes (not knowing my geo past) and I replied "umm.. I haven't wanted to study dinosaurs since I was ten; does he discuss mammals?". Two of the guys were vertebrate paleontologists... focusing on dinosaurs.
This is one of the greatest internet posts of all time anywhere about anything. I really don't know what it means, but I know that it is something special. Yes the original article was up there, but this has an air of mystery about it that makes it extremely deep. For example: Is he serious, or is he that creative? Is his level of sarcasm so powerful that he deftly slips past even the most rabid of skeptics or is he really that into geology? If he is that into geology, could he also be extremely sarcastic? And if the entire post was sincere and not sarcastic, then it is still just as great because of the genuine artistry stemming from the alignment of someone talking about a 100 million year old penis and someone then turning the topic into a course selection story. This was worth not getting any sleep for tomorrow.
I'm sorry dude, but you have to be the craziest muthafucca I have EVER run across in life. No offense seriously, I'm getting a kick out of all your posts tonight.
Yup. I just put that in my sig so people don't think I'm some Rockets-Fan-By-Way-Of-Ming bandwagoner judging by my registration date. Shallow but true.
Well, it is a good thing that you warned me because I was about to post a picture of a japenese woman shooting feces into the air and having it land in her mouth. It is very tasteful. I was going to put it in the "what kind of art do you like?" thread. BTW, if you want to talk to me about the subject of the Dtown thread you should join the shroomery.
Thanks a lot for the tip LeGrouper. I don't have a handle there yet, but I'm already in the midst of researching. Very useful info.
