The head of Molecular and Biomedical Science at the University of Adelaide, Professor David Adelson, led the project and says it involved comparing dozens of DNA sequences from different species.

"There was an observation backs in the '80s that snakes and cows shared a segment of DNA that looked to be quite similar in sequence and that was found to be a repetitive sequence," he said.

"We basically went and scoured all of the databases for sequence, and did sequencing of our own across some species where there was no available information, and put all of that together."

Professor Adelson says the DNA sequence shared by cows and reptiles is known as Bov-B.