Ocean species may have been 1st to mate

Somewhere between the rise of single-cell organisms from the primordial soup and the advent of dating apps, reproduction made the leap from cloning to sex.

A ghostly, bottom-dwelling ocean creature that came and went about 565 million years ago just may have been the first to cross that threshold, according to a study published this week in Nature.

"Fractofusus looked like nothing that is alive today," said the study's lead author, Emily Mitchell, a researcher at the University of Cambridge.