[katana]

The offspring share only half the mother's genetic make-up

I followed along right up to this point and then went to read the entire article. Where did the other half of the offspring's DNA come from? The article goes into some good detail. Do female vertebrates carry around a store of extra RNA strands from birth? It will be interesting to see if these "new" snakes can breed or are a sort of genetic dead end.

Unfortunately, they don't look anything like my favorite reptile:

[allmendream]

I wondered the same thing. The original article at the source gives greater detail.

The mother passed on half of her DNA -but doubled. The offspring have two identical copies of each gene. The mother has, for each gene, one copy from her mom and one copy from her dad. The offspring have either two copies of a grandma snake gene, or two copies of a grandpa snake gene.

[Nabber]

Or my favorite reptile, the original: Diana > Anna