Colymbosathon ecplecticos
The oldest unequivocally male fossil has been found in Herefordshire, England. This is good new to me. There are days when I wake up, look in the mirror while shaving, and wonder if I am not the oldest male fossil.
The fossil in question is an ostracode that has been described as a “shrimp-like” creature. It is 425 million years old. What is unique about this find is that the fossil still had an image of its soft body parts preserved, including its, well, male appendage. Not the willy itself, but an image of the willy, that was created when the soft tissue was replaced over time by minerals. There are other recognizable parts, apparently, but the news reports have focused primarily on the maleness of this animal.
Scientists named the new species, Colymbosathon ecplecticos, which is Greek for “amazing swimmer with large penis.” Hah! And people don’t think scientists have good senses of humor. I had a look at the pictures taken of this critter and I am not so certain about what I am seeing. I mean, how do we know they we are actually looking at a penis? Maybe 425 million years ago the parts were not in the same places that they are today. Maybe that’s its nose. Maybe it’s an amazing swimmer with a really big antenna. It seems to me that a person who can both identify the penis on a pea-sized fossil and know with some certainty that the organ is above average in size has spent way too much time in school and should get out more, perhaps join a bowling league.
What troubles me the most here is that we have found a brand new species and we have already diminished it by treating it like a sex object: The well-hung ostracode. Haven’t we evolved from defining an individual by the size of its unmentionables? Isn’t it bad enough that many men feel inadequate about their manhood, that they are reminded of it daily by the many spam emails they receive promising to increase their penis size, that they are then let down when these products don’t work – not a damn one of them – and that they will just have to live with what they have down there because not everybody can be an amazing swimmer with a large penis? Truly, the last thing we guys needed was for some bottom-dwelling stud to come around and kick sand in our faces.
And then there is this thought. What happens a couple of hundred million years from now when some over-educated paleontologist digs up one of us and sees an image of our soft tissue? What kind of Greek terminology will he use to describe our penis? What’s the Greek word for inchworm?
Geeze, as if I didn’t have enough to worry about.
8:57:17 AM 
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