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The Harvard Museum of Natural History's famous 42-foot Kronosaurus queenslandicus skeleton — the head of which is shown here — is an example of a sauropterygian. Scientists now say that spe-cies like this one thrived in the world's oceans millions of years ago after evolving genetic sex de-termination and live-born young. Photo by Mark Sloan/HMNH |
Genetic sex determination let ancient species adapt to ocean lifeA
new analysis of extinct sea creatures suggests that the transition from
egg-laying to live-born young opened up evolutionary pathways that allowed
these ancient species to adapt to and thrive in open oceans. The evolutionary sleuthing is described today in a letter in the journal Nature by scientists at Harvard and the University of Reading who also report that the evolution of live-born young depended crucially on the advent of genes — rather than incubation temperature — as the primary determinant of offspring sex. |
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