Gigantic Genomes and Supersized Salamander Cells Surprise Scientists and Put a Wrinkle in Evolutionary Theory

Does the size of a creature’s cells or genome specify its evolutionary path? That was what we thought, but data from salamanders question whether this is really the case.

Rich Sobel
ILLUMINATION-Curated
13 min readDec 11, 2023

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Picture of Neuse River Waterdog salamander in a person’s hand
Image taken from this site

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Rich Sobel
ILLUMINATION-Curated

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