Biology Wonder: 245 Million-Year-Old Marine Reptile Gave Birth to Young Ones Instead Of Laying Eggs

Archosauromorph – a particular type of reptile species – whose natural reproductive manner was earlier believed to lay eggs, now is on the verge of being proved as self-indulgent, thanks to the fossil of the 245 Million years old aquatic reptile.

As we all know most of the mammal species including some lizards and snakes give birth to young ones, but archosaurs – a particular reptilian genre that embraces crocodiles and birds never give birth to live babies, but instead, they lay eggs. This long-established belief now seems just to be a wallowing hypothesis of biologists. Because the fossil of a marine reptile, which used to live on earth some 245 million years ago, might not have stringent egg producers, rather they are found to born live babies, like human do.

Scientists have suggested this view, after analyzing the fossil of a long-necked, aquatic reptile, called archosauromorph. The creature, whose fossil has put on trial was pregnant during its death time and is estimated to pass on some 245 million years ago in a region, which now belongs to China. According to the researchers, the fossil of the aquatic reptile was detained in 2008 in Luoping County, Yunnan Province in southern China. She was pregnant and is the most reliable proof that archosauromorph was not strict egg-layers, but they hardened to deliver live babies.

According to Jun Liu, the lead author of the new study, appeared in the journal Nature Communications, “The animal is projected to have measured from three to four meters long, with a long neck that would have measured nearly 1.7m long. The embryo of the reptile might have been almost half a meter long and was positioned within the beam cage of the mature Dinocephalosaurus fossil.”

According to the research paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, on Tuesday, the fossil of the creature is definite proof that some hundreds of centuries earlier, the aquatic reptiles used to have a reproductive system that delivers live babies, instead of eggs. The palaeontologists also found that the structure of the mysterious animal to be quite similar to those of dinosaurs.