Bad News: It's a Big Lizard!!
According to a report noted in Evolving in Kansas, Komodo Dragons have been hatched in Sedgwick County without fertilization by a male.
There are two of them, both males. (Isn't that interesting?) ...
I think they should name them Jesus and Brian.
More like this
Attorney general misrepresented sex-crime case:
Two hundred years ago today, in the little country town of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Charles Robert Darwin was born. No one then could have known that, fifty years and nine months later, Charles would deliver a treatise that would forever change our understanding of our place in nature.
I'd known for a long time that the term "scientist" had been coined in the early 19th century, but I just ran across a first-hand account of the event by the fellow who came up with it, William Whewell.
I thought that parthenogenesis always produced female offspring because the they would have inherited both x chromosomes from the mother.
Not all animals use the mammalian XX (female) XY (male) or the birds ZZ (male) and ZW (female)) to distinguish the sexes. I believe some reptiles use incubation temperature though others use chromosomes.
See
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7178/full/451527a.html
for some info
Note that in bees fertilized eggs become females (either queens or workers depending on diet) while unfertilized eggs become males (drones).
Biblical based exemptionalism sure is taking a beating.
Reptiles' sex determination is based on the temperature of incubation of the egg.
Interesting! Now that you say it, it seems like I've heard that somewhere before.
I guess it would be possible for the zoo to determine the results by changing the temperature.