(TWN) - Scientists have discovered the first occurrence of a "virgin birth" in a female crocodile who had no contact with men for around 16 years.

For the first time, researchers have discovered proof that female crocodiles are capable of giving birth to eggs without mating. This unusual reproductive method may have its evolutionary origins in the time of the dinosaurs.

The reptile was able to give birth to a completely developed baby that shared 99.9% of her genetic makeup.

According to the researchers, this discovery, which was published in the journal Biology Letters, offers "tantalizing insights," indicating that its evolutionary relatives, like the dinosaurs, may have also been able to reproduce on their own. Virgin birth, also known as facultative parthenogenesis, has been observed in many bird, fish lizard, and snake species but never in crocodiles. Without the need of sperm, it is the process by which an egg transforms into an embryo.

A female crocodile in a zoo in Costa Rica produced a clutch of eggs in January 2018. She had been living alone for 16 years, which was strange.

That appears to be what happened in the case of the crocodile eggs, according to Warren Booth, an associate professor at Virginia Tech who has investigated them. Booth is an entomologist whose primary emphasis is bedbugs, but he also has a strong interest in discovering parthenogenesis. The genome of a parthenogenetic crocodile has been sequenced, and it appears that its chromosomes differ from the mother's at their tips, where there has been some reshuffling of her DNA – a telltale indicator of polar body fusion.

This is exactly what happens in parthenogenesis in birds, lizards, and snakes, according to Booth, implying that these creatures gained the ability from a common ancestor. However, crocodiles originated far before many other modern parthenogenetic species, raising intriguing questions about the creatures that came before them.