yes it's -- PENIS NEWS -- March 2004 -- YOU CAN USE -- if you're kinda odd

NEWS REREPORTED by JIM W.

he world's oldest penis is a fossil, found recently by a researcher in the United Kingdom and reported late in 2003 in the journal Science.

Most soft tissue from plants and animals never makes it into a fossil, which typically consists of harder items like bones and teeth. But every now and then scientists get lucky. Researchers at the University of Leicester sliced this fossil ultra-thin and used computer graphics software to assemble a 3-dimensional model. They discovered that the soft parts were remarkably well preserved.

Their abstract reports, coyly, that "the fossil is identified as a male on the basis of its copulatory organ" -- namely, a penis. Many other soft structures (a digestive system, a cloaca, eyes, etc.) were also identified.

The fossil is dated to a time about 425 million years ago, during the Silurian paleontological period. Although there are no living members of this particular species, there are many Cylindroleberididae species alive today, and they are remarkably similar to the fossil recovered.

World's Oldest Penis
Discoverer

How Big? How Hard?

So how big was this marvelous copulatory organ? Not very. The entire beast checks in at 2 tenths of an inch long. So although the penis in question may have been very impressive to the lady Cylindroleberididae* of the time, by the standards of today it wouldn't win any awards.

On the other hand, although the penis parts in question were soft at the time of death, they are now quite hard, and are unlikely to soften any time soon.

• Link to the Science article

• Link to the professor's website

* Well of course it might have been a gay Cylindroleberididid, so maybe what the ladies thought of it was irrelevant.