Scientist recently thought they had discovered an ancient spider with nine legs perfectly preserved in amber; yet it wasn’t until they noticed up close that they realized it was the spider’s erect penis.
The ancient harvestman or daddy longlegs have mammal like penises and was found in Burmese amber from the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar.
The ancient specimen apparently died in a state of arousal and likely near a female, a study suggests. According to The Science of Nature the spider, dating back to the Cretaceous age, was given its own name (Halitherses Grimaldii) for its unique penis. Recent reports features the classification of harvestman species as fossils, the latest being a Halitherses grimaldii specimen.
Identifying and placing the species within the familial lineage in the arachnid’s world is mainly thanks to the species’ genitalia. “It must have been in an amorous state to have it out like this,” said Ron Clouse of the American Museum of Natural History in a National Geographic interview. “This poor animal” he added whimsically.
“This is the first record of a male copulatory organ of this nature preserved in amber and is of so special importance due to the age deposit,” state researchers from the Science of Nature in their study. “The penis has a slender, distally flattened truncus, a heart-shaped glands and a short distal stylus, twisted at the tip.”
Researchers said that the disappointment of not discovering a completely new species was quickly turned upside down when large pharmaceutical companies offered billions for the findings. Still, researchers didn’t stop studying the perfectly conserved subject.
This harvestman spider species have puzzled researchers with other exceptional features, in a rather strange combination of modern and primitive characteristics. Its large eyes are proof of the mixture of features regarding not only the body and its legs but also the specimen genitalia.
When erect the harvestman’s penis grew to nearly half the size of its body. These animals have been around for more than 400 million years, therefore, giving scientist a difficult task when it comes to classification.
A press release was published in The Science of Nature where researchers explained, “This is the first time that a fossil family has been defined using a mixture of features relating to both the body and the genitalia, and allowed the researchers to study the relationships of these ancient fossils using the same approaches that they would use for living species.”
Source: NY Daily News