Fossil 'Suggests Plesiosaurs Did Not Lay Eggs' 79
thebchuckster writes "Scientists say they have found the first evidence that giant sea reptiles — which lived at the same time as dinosaurs — gave birth to live young rather than laying eggs. They say a 78 million-year-old fossil of a pregnant plesiosaur suggests they gave birth to single, large young."
Re:Plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs (Score:5, Interesting)
I was recently reading somewhere that crocodiles (and other Crocodilia) were at one time warm blooded. The evidence being that they have a 4 chamber heart like most warm blooded animals. It was theorized that they reverted to being cold blooded at some point in their evolution.
Interestingly crocodilia also have a neo-cortex and diaphragm unlike all other extent reptiles.
As usual Wikipedia has a bit about it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodilia#Internal_organs [wikipedia.org]
Placental sharks (Score:4, Interesting)
If memory serves, I recall hearing that sharks run the gamut from plain oviparous through to placental warm-blooded viviparous.
Ah, yep, here's Google [google.com] to the rescue.
Sometimes I run across news about discoveries where the commentators are all surprised, but in ways that make me think we need to get over ourselves :) as the utmost pinnacle of evolution or some such nonsense and just realise that we are no more than a combination of various biological strategies that had already been "invented" in numerous other branches of life. We're just a happy accident of much larger processes.
Cheers,