In Science, it is widely known that living things without bones do not fossilize easily as compared to those who have. These include worms, leeches and sperm. But, a group of scientists from Stockholm were in awe upon the discovery of a 50-million-year-old sperm of a worm-like creature which was fossilized.

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In a statement made by the lead author Benjamin Bomfleur, he said that the discovery was "a big surprise and almost pure chance," according to Discovery.

The sperm was preserved inside a cocoon from one of the most immemorial living creatures in Antarctica which is very much resistant to decay. This precedes the previous record holder, a 10-million-year old fossilized sperm of a mussel shrimp, as per Science Recorder.

It is very likely that the cocoon may have more surprising discoveries in store. "I think we might have a really interesting system here that can be a window to the past," Jakob Vinther, an invertebrate evolutionist at the U.K.'s University of Bristol, reported to Nature.

This recent discovery was published in the journal Biology Letters on Wednesday. It is unfortunate though that it did not contain a single viable DNA which may be used to revive the creature, according to Empire State Tribune.

According to the study, It is still not clear what these creatures look exactly and where in the taxonomy they should belong to, but the sperm closely resembles those of the crayfish worms, which are leech-like and live on freshwater lobsters, Newsweek has learned.

"The seas were brimming the life, with nautiloids (a mollusk group), sew urchins, clams and mussels, and a wide variety of sharks and other fishes; on land, there was a wide diversity of mammal fauna, ranging from small marsupials to large ungulates and sloths, as well as large running birds," said Bomfleur.

The scientists used a method called strontium isotope dating in order to date the finding. This is a technique that determines the relative ratio of chemical varieties, or isotopes, of strontium, the number, which changed very slowly but predictably over the past millions of years.  

"There could be a lot of potential hidden gems inside these cocoons," said Vinther.

TagsSperm, Study, discovery, Antarctica