Lizard Moving From Eggs to Live Birth (2010)

by Brian Handwerk

Evolution has been caught in the act, according to scientists who are decoding how a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.

Along the warm coastal lowlands of New South Wales, the yellow-bellied three-toed skink lays eggs to reproduce. But individuals of the same species living in the state’s higher, colder mountains are almost all giving birth to live young…

(read more: National Geographic)

photograph by Rebecca A. Pyles