Illinois research team reveals ‘virgin birth’ in a crocodile

A female crocodile living in isolation for 16 years at a Costa Rican zoo laid a clutch of eggs, a common practice among captive reptiles, even those without mates. After three months of incubation, one egg contained “a fully formed stillborn baby crocodile,” a team of scientists from the Illinois Natural History found.
Mark Davis, a conservation biologist at INHS and co-author on the study, helped examine the crocodile fetus’ genomic makeup, ultimately discovering that the fetal genome resulted from reproduction without a male crocodile’s genetic contribution.

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