SHARK-like fishes were the first animals to have sex for fun, Discovery News reported today, citing research based on well-preserved fossils of the creatures found in Western Australia.
Previously it had been thought that the jaws of the fish were developed over time to facilitate feeding - but scientists now believe the jaws were used to aid mating.
"Jaws might not have first evolved for feeding, as widely presupposed, but to facilitate copulatory mating," project leader John Long said.
"In many sharks the jaws are used to hold on to pectoral fins of females so copulation can take place."
Intimate sex by copulation first occurred 400 to 410 million years ago, according to scientists, in the early Devonian Period.
Mr Long, who is vice president of research and collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, said mating between the fish was "not just spawning in water, but sex that was fun".
Mr Long and his team announced the determinations today at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's 70th Anniversary Meeting in Pittsburgh.
The scientists came to their conclusions after studying fossil embryos from ptyctodontid and arthrodiran placoderm fishes - similar to today's sharks.
"Our finds show that these extinct armored fishes, the placoderms, had intimate copulation with males inserting claspers (a structure that is part of the pelvic fin) inside the female to deposit sperm," Mr Long told Discovery News.
The find "is significant because it means that an advanced form of reproduction involving copulation and live-bearing was more widespread than previously thought."
Read more at Discovery News.
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