First whale-dolphin mix in captivity gives birth last week\nHONOLULU -- The only whale-dolphin mix in captivity has given birth to a playful female calf, officials at Sea Life Park Hawaii said Thursday.\nThe calf was born on Dec. 23, to Kekaimalu, a mix of a false killer whale and an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. Park officials said they waited to announce the birth until now because of recent changes in ownership and operations at the park.\nThe young as-yet unnamed wholphin is one-fourth false killer whale and three-fourths Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. Her slick skin is an even blend of a dolphin's light gray and the black coloring of a false killer whale.\nThe calf still depends fully on her mother's milk, but sometimes snatches frozen capelin from the hands of trainers, then toys with the sardine-like fish. She is jumbo-sized compared to purebred dolphins, and is already the size of a one-year-old bottlenose.\nExperts say there have been reports of wholphins in the wild.\nKekaimalu, whose name means "from the peaceful ocean," was born 19 years ago after a surprise coupling between a 14-foot, 2,000-pound false killer whale and a 6-foot, 400-pound dolphin. The animals were the leads in the park's popular tourist water show, featured in the Adam Sandler movie "50 First Dates."\nKekaimalu has given birth to two other calves. One lived for nine years and the other, born when Kekaimalu was very young, died a few days after birth.\nSea Life Park officials said they hope to decide on a name for the baby wholphin soon and move her to a large display tank in a few months.
Eggs found inside dinosaur offer insight to reproductive biology\nWASHINGTON -- The rare discovery of eggs inside a dinosaur has given scientists new clues about the reproductive biology of the creatures and more support for the theory that birds came from dinosaurs.\nThe pair of shelled eggs is the first of its kind found inside a dinosaur, said researchers who reported the discovery in Friday's issue of the journal Science. \nThe remains of the shelled eggs looked like pineapple-sized potatoes. The similar size of the eggs suggests the creature's two oviducts each produced a single, shelled egg at the same time, the report said.\nScientists found the dinosaur produced eggs in some ways like a crocodile and in other ways like a bird. Crocodiles and similar primitive reptiles have two ovaries enabling them to lay a clutch of eggs. Birds have a single ovary and can only lay one egg at a time.\nThe dinosaur's egg-producing capability lay somewhere in between, suggesting a link with the modern bird, researchers said. It could produce more than one egg, but only one from each ovary at a time.\nThe theory that birds came from dinosaurs has been supported by many researchers, said Tamaki Sato of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. But this latest research helps advance it, she added, calling it "strong evidence."\nThere have been previous findings of round objects around dinosaur skeletons and scientists have suspected they might be eggs but because they did not have shells, there wasn't certainty, Sato said.
