This characteristic organ of viviparous placental mammals, including hominids, plays a key role in the survival of the fetus, since, among other things, it provides the necessary nutrients for it to develop and allows it to breathe and excrete the products. waste . Although some species of snakes and lizards have similar structures, until a few years ago it was thought that true placentas were exclusive to these types of mammals.
However, in 2011, Daniel G. Blackburn, from the Department of Biology at Trinity College, Connecticut (USA), and Alexander F. Flemming, from the Botany and Zoology Department at the University of Stellenbosch, in South Africa, revealed in the Journal of Morphology that the reptile Trachylepis ivensii has one that works in a practically identical way.
During embryonic development, this animal, which the biologist Philipp Wagner of the Alexander Koenig Research Museum in Germany has located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia and Angola , loses the remnant of the shell and attaches itself to the wall of the oviduct. from his mother , where he accesses sustenance through his circulatory system.
Image: Philipp Wagner
