This is the science behind the amazing reproduction of this dinosaur from Jurassic World.

“Life goes on as usual”. With this proposal, the mathematician Jan Malcolm launched in the first part Jurassic Park a premonition of what was to come. He said this after learning about the birth control mechanism of the creatures in the park. All dinosaurs were females. However, in the end, some managed to breed. In previous parts jurassic world We have seen more than once that history repeats itself, and how could it be otherwise, it repeats itself in this sense as well. You can no longer see how Bluethe most iconic of the female Velociraptors in the second saga manages to bring another creature into the world in Jurassic World: Dominion. But how does he do it? The key is in parthenogenesis.

Logically, these films are full of fiction, but there are phenomena in their plot that can be explained by science. And this is one of them. In fact, it is not uncommon for some females in the wild to produce young in the absence of a male.

Although the process of parthenogenesis is more common in invertebrates, it can also occur in vertebrates such as reptiles or birds. Talk of reptiles and birds leads us to think of dinosaurs, so it’s more than likely that Blue’s motherhood Jurassic World: Dominion is due to this phenomenon. The movie doesn’t talk about it, but the truth is, it all fits together.

What is parthenogenesis?

Parthenogenesis is a phenomenon in which female sex cells can develop. no need for fertilization give rise to a new individual. In short, it consists of a punctual process of asexual reproduction in species that normally reproduce sexually. It is still a way of keeping the species alive in adverse situations where the females cannot (or do not want to) access the male.

Numerous cases have been reported in vertebrates in recent years. One of the most interesting was Charlie, a female Komodo dragon who managed to lay three eggs without ever having sexual intercourse with a male. Her case is quite exceptional because she came into contact with a male at the zoo where she lives. However, she did not seem to want to get along with him, and she eventually developed this procedure, which usually occurs in extreme cases.

Cases have also been recently reported in a female shark and an anaconda. Sometimes there is only one child, and sometimes there are several. In Blue’s case, jurassic worldproduced an only daughter, whom they baptized as Beta. But what else can we know about her, assuming that she was born through parthenogenesis?

Life goes on as usual in Jurassic World

Animals that normally reproduce sexually have a variable but always even number chromosomes in their somatic cells. That is, in cells that are not sexual. There are half of them in the sex cells (eggs and sperm), so when fertilization occurs and they give a zygote, I have all the chromosomes of somatic cells.

For example, humans have 46 chromosomes. There are 23 and 23 of them in eggs and sperm, so after fertilization we have zygote of 46 chromosomes, which will divide into cells with the same set. What happens in parthenogenesis, however, is that the female contributes a chromosome, as is usually the case, and then duplicates it. This way you won’t need another one given by a male.

As for the sex chromosomes, in humans, the female sex is associated with XX, and the male with XY, so lEggs can only carry X chromosomes, while spermatozoa can carry either X or Y chromosomes.

Now what would happen if we humans could breed parthenogenesis? Basically, that in that case we could only have daughters; because, if not for the intervention of a man, there would never have been Y chromosomes.

Other animals are different. For example, Komodo dragons have different chromosomes. Females are WZ and males are ZZ.. This will result in ZZ or WW offspring. It can never be WZ, because we said that the female gives a single chromosome, and it is duplicated. The problem is that WW doesn’t exist, it would be like YY in humans. So they don’t go forward and become young. Therefore, there could only be ZZ males. This is exactly what happened to Charlie, whose eggs hatched into three males: Onyx, Jasper and Flint.

As for what’s going on with Blue in jurassic world, we don’t know exactly what dinosaur reproduction would have been like, although there is some speculation. For example, in 2004 a review was published discussing two possibilities: Genetic determination of sex and determination of sex in the environment. The first is the one that governs the chromosomes and can be seen in animals such as our own. komodo dragons. As for the second, which takes place in crocodiles and some turtles, is temperature mediated. Depending on the temperature at which the eggs are incubated, the individual that hatches from them will be male or female. This could lead to great disparity, marked by prevailing temperatures, which could even put an end to the extinction of the species.

Assuming that dinosaurs jurassic world If they had a genetic sex determination, then the distribution of chromosomes could be the same as that of the Komodo dragon. Thus, during parthenogenesis Beta was supposed to be a man. But there can also be a definition of the environment, in which case it could be a woman. The problem is that if determination were environmentally conditioned, life would have made its way much sooner than it did, as in Jurassic Park how in jurassic world. Let’s just say, there is some fiction here. It’s okay, after all, it’s a movie after all. Be that as it may, the case of Beta is a good example that Ian Malcom was right: life goes on as usual. And he does it both in two dinosaur parks and in real life.