10 fossilized animals caught red-handed
To fossilize an organism you need a very specific set of conditions. Most animal remains simply rot and are lost forever. But because countless billions of organisms are living and dying at any given time, at least some of them are preserved for us to study, and some of them leave behind very revealing fossils. Some are even caught during mating.
Even if you are a productive partner, sex only takes up a small part of your life. Here are ten animals who did something in the wrong place and at the wrong time that hopefully gave them some happy last moments.
Related: 10 special fossils that hid surprising facts
10 Spider-like erection
Most people probably don’t think of spiders when they think of sex, but there’s a fossil arachnid that boasts the longest-lasting erection in history. The harvest man Halitherses grimaldii was discovered in a piece of amber from Myanmar that was 99 million years old. When inspected by scientists, they found that the specimen displayed a proud swollen member.
This finding was very unexpected because, unlike some animals, harvestman arachnids usually do not have exposed genitalia. Males only show their penis at the time of copulation. It looks like this poor individual ended up in sticky sap while mating. It was fortunate for scientists that the penis was put on display, as its unusual shape helped them determine that the fossil was of a new species.
It is not known what happened to the arachnid’s partner.[1]
9 The first sexy fish
It seems we have sex to thank for Scotland’s lakes. Tiny fish just 3cm long have been discovered in sandstone deposits from northern Scotland, which may be the cause of internal fertilization. Before them, most fish appear to have been produced by dropping eggs and sperm into the water, where fertilization took place outside the body.
Dating from 385 million years ago, Microbrachius dicki has unusual features that indicate they mate and pass genetic material directly. Males of this species have bony prehensiles for grasping females and an L-shaped appendage that would have functioned as a penis to place sperm into the females. The females, in turn, had plates that helped the males cling during mating. We can even see them mating by attaching to each other laterally.
As for the name Microbrachius dicki… It is named after its discoverer Robert Dick and not because of the presence of sexual organs.[2]
8 Froghopper hug
Everyone wants the earth to move for them during sex, but for one pair of bugs, they went out with a real bang. A few small froghopper insects, Anthoscytina perpetua, died while mating when a volcano erupted. The volcano launched poisonous clouds into the sky, instantly killing the animals in the area, and thus the froghoppers found themselves in an eternal embrace. While they were still holding each other, the insects fell into a lake. They were buried under sediment, where they fossilized and were discovered 165 million years later.
Scientists were excited to find this glimpse into insect mating rituals because it revealed that the mechanisms of frog sex haven’t changed that much in more than a hundred million years. Froghoppers mate by pressing their bellies together. They discovered that the missionary position worked for them, and they stuck with it.[3]
7 Mating moths
Fossils of insects captured during mating are among the most prized by paleontologists. Many insects have very different male and female forms, so if they are found alone it can sometimes be difficult to be sure they are from the same species. If you mate a pair, at least you can be fairly certain that they belong to the same species.
A pair of moths was discovered in Baltic amber with their genitals facing each other. By examining them under a microscope, scientists were able to see up close how the moths made love. They were quite impressed with what they found: they described the male as having a “large clamping device.”
The researchers also noted that the moths were somewhat separated from each other. They attributed it to becoming distracted in the final moments because they were enveloped in the resin that killed them.[4]
6 Flies in Flagrante
Frozen behavior is what scientists call fossils, which reveal something about how an ancient animal behaved while it was still alive. Sex is one of the rarest frozen behaviors, and it can be very revealing indeed.
Forty-one million year old amber from Australia showed a pair of long-legged flies buried in resin while mating. What it cannot tell us is how consensual this act was. Maybe the two were mating and simply got overwhelmed by the tidal wave of sticky goo. The alternative that has been suggested is that perhaps the female got stuck in the resin, and a passing male decided this was his time to strike. If this is the case, then he was undone by his actions and died for them.[5]
5 Centipede mating marks
The Lower Carboniferous, about 350 million years ago, was a good time to be a centipede. There were vast and swampy rainforests, the climate was warm and humid, and there were few animals that could kill and eat you. Over time, some centipedes have grown enormous compared to their modern relatives. Britain was once home to millipedes over 2 meters long.
This giant Arthropleura centipedes have also left hints about how they reproduced. One of the most common fossils these invertebrates leave behind are the tracks they left in the mud as they scurried about, and scientists think they may have found evidence of mating from these.
Paleontologists discovered the tracks of a centipede and noticed something strange about them. It seemed as if two centipedes had walked the exact same path, but this seemed unlikely. What actually happened is that one centipede mounted the other, and the two walked along while mating.[6]
4 Difficult Maters
Invertebrates can be attentive lovers. Males of some species offer females a so-called wedding gift before mating. These gifts are in the form of edible items. By feeding the female, the male provides her with nutrition, increasing the chance that his children will survive. Some insects kill and care for prey, but while some lovers are generous, others are troublesome.
In a piece of fossil amber found in Myanmar, a fly was discovered holding a balloon of silk. Normally this silk bundle was full of something tasty for the female, but in this case it was completely empty. This is a trick that some male insects use to mate, but without actually having to give up anything. While the female accepts the wedding gift, the male delivers his sperm and runs away before discovering that it is worthless. The female is left with the costs of producing eggs with nothing to show for it.[7]
3 Dinosaur dancing
When you weigh several tons, mating has to be done sensitively if you don’t want to be crushed or crushed. There is still intense debate about how exactly dinosaurs had sex. In modern birds and reptiles, the most common practice is for them to perform a “cloacal kiss,” in which males expel sperm from their cloaca (a hole used for both excretion and sex) while the female receives it in hers.
In this position, the partners usually face away from each other in order to reverse into place. A case of two dinosaurs with their tails entwined in this way could indicate that this is the way dinosaurs mate. It is also possible that male dinosaurs had a penis. Unfortunately, the soft parts of dinosaurs rarely fossilize, so there is little direct evidence.
Lacking soft tissue, paleontologists must look to other ways to figure out how dinosaurs mate. In Colorado, they may have found traces of dinosaur foreplay. Tracks left by a pair of carnivorous dinosaurs show them scraping the ground repeatedly. Comparing these tracks to those of modern birds, researchers concluded that this was evidence of the mating dance that many species perform before mating.[8]
2 Love locked turtles
The Messel Quarry in Germany is one of the most important fossil sites in the world. Thanks to a quirk in the region’s geology, thousands of animals and plants fell into a lake 47 million years ago, where they were beautifully preserved in the shale formed from the sediment in which they were buried. It is possible that the lake occasionally released deadly gases that killed the organisms around it.
Among the animals found there, they discovered nine pairs of turtles that died during mating. It took us a while to figure out that the turtles were mating. There was a possibility that the turtles were simply killed near each other, but the study revealed that each pair consisted of a male and a female. They were also found with their backsides facing each other, as if caught in the middle of a cloacal kiss. Two were found with their tails intertwined in a manner observed in modern turtle mating.[9]
1 Frog orgy
The Geisel Valley is another site in Germany that has produced thousands of incredibly detailed fossils. Once again there was once a lake into which all kinds of animals fell about 50 million years ago. Among the fossils found were 168 frogs, but there was a mystery as to how they died. The bodies were complete and showed no signs of attack by a predator, nor were there any signs of illness.
One clue was that frogs, like those found here, usually live on land and only return to water to mate. It appears that the frog fossils show the deadly consequences of mass mating. It turns out that mating female frogs can be a dangerous endeavor, as male frogs mount the female, sometimes holding them underwater for so long that they drown.
It also sometimes happens that a number of males surround a female and all try to mate with her at the same time, forming a so-called ‘brood ball’. If caught by the males, she runs the risk of not being able to come back up and dying. The Geisel Valley fossils may reveal an orgy of amphibians that got out of control.[10]