German palaeontologists have dug up the remains of nine turtle
pairs that died while mating some 47 million years ago, sinking
into poisonous waters while locked in a final embrace, a report
said Wednesday. The find represents the first-ever fossil record
of copulating vertebrates (animals with a backbone), said a
report in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters. "Millions
of animals live and die every year and many enter the fossil
record through serendipitous circumstances, but there really is
no reason to enter the fossil record while you are mating," co-
author Walter Joyce told AFP about the rarity of the find. "The
chances of both partners dying at the same time is highly
unlikely and the chances of both partners being preserved
afterwards even less likely." The discovery at the Messel Pit
fossil site between Darmstadt and Frankfurt in Germany allowed
the team to deduct that the waters of the Messel Lake had been
hospitable enough to allow turtles to live and mate. But the
animals died accidentally wh