Scientists have identified the first creature to reproduce sexually – a primitive fish that lived in Scottish freshwater lakes over 385 million years ago. Before then, it was all about spawning. When Professor John Long from Flinders University in Australia examined the ancient fish fossils, he noticed one had an odd, L-shaped appendage, which turned out to be the male fish’s genitalia, complete with grooves through which sperm were transferred into the female. ‘We have defined the very point in evolution where the origin of internal fertilisation in all animals began,’ claims the professor. And the name of the fish species? Microbrachius dicki. However, scientists believe sex didn’t catch on initially. Fish reverted to spawning and it wasn’t until several million years later that the ancestors of sharks and rays started having sex again.