Scientists discovered the ability of crocodiles to “immaculate conception”
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Scientists have found evidence that female crocodiles are capable of partogenesis, that is, they can lay eggs without prior mating. The ability to “immaculate conception” in crocodiles was discovered for the first time, reports The New York Times with reference to an article in the journal Biology Letters. In January 2018, a female crocodile that had lived alone for 16 years laid eggs in a zoo in Costa Rica, after which one of them continued to mature in an incubator. When the egg hatched, scientists saw a formed but dead baby crocodile inside. Photo: Quetzal Dwyer Scientists explain that during maturation, the egg cell divides into smaller sac cells, some of which die. In vertebrates capable of parthenogenesis, such cells can fuse with an egg cell, forming a cell with the necessary set of chromosomes for the formation of an embryo. In this way, “immaculate fertilization” occurs in birds, lizards, snakes and, probably, it could happen in crocodiles from the Costa Rican zoo. Photo: WaterFrame/Alamy Warren Booth, an associate professor at the Virginia Institute of Technology, who studied the eggs, suggested that crocodiles may have inherited the ability to parthenogenesis from their “ancestors.” “This indicates that it is very likely that pterosaurs and dinosaurs also had the ability to parthenogenesis,” says the scientist. According to him, it is impossible to definitively prove the existence of dinosaurs’ ability to give birth without fertilization, because for this you need the DNA of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, which have not been preserved. He hypothesized that parthenogenesis could allow some species of animals to survive when there is no partner. At the same time, the ability to “immaculate conception” may indicate that this function is not sufficiently flawed for evolution to eradicate it. According to Booth, this ability could probably be turned “on” and “off” by animals, and it may be controlled by a single gene. In 2020, scientists discovered that lizards can mate and then lay eggs, some of which had normal offspring, while others were capable of parthenogenesis. It will be recalled that the paws of the largest extinct bird on Earth were found in Australia. Read also: In Argentina, they found the remains of a small dinosaur that weighed as much as a domestic cat
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