Ancient Fish Created Copulation
Hundreds of millions of years ago, a tiny fish seems to have invented internal fertilization....
Hundreds of millions of years ago, a tiny fish seems to have invented internal fertilization.
385 Million years ago, a tiny fish seems to have pioneered a new sexual strategy: internal fertilization. Sex before this was restricted to external fertilization - females laying eggs and males releasing sperm near them. But according to Professor John Long, Strategic Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, the males of an armoured fish called Microbrachius dicki, has the earliest example of genital "claspers" that would have been used to fertilize eggs inside the female. This is a strategy that later was pursued by many fish (sharks and rays in particular) and all terrestrial vertebrates, and, in fact, probably enabled the colonization of land.
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