Turtle genome analysis sheds light on turtle ancestry and shell evolution
Sunday, April 28, 2013 - 14:30
in Biology & Nature
From which ancestors have turtles evolved? How did they get their shell? New data provides evidence that turtles are not primitive reptiles but belong to a sister group of birds and crocodiles. The work also sheds light on the evolution of the turtle’s intriguing morphology and reveals that the turtle’s shell evolved by recruiting genetic information encoding for the limbs.