A 200-year-old mystery about newts has finally been solved

All great crested newts have a genetic flaw that dooms half of their offspring to die while still in the egg. How they evolved such a disadvantageous trait has long been a mystery, but now we have an unexpected answer.

“It’s fair to say that everything we expected or predicted turned out to be wrong,” says Ben Wielstra at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The fact that many crested newts die in the egg…