Twin sisters reveal how one photo led them to discover they had different fathers aged 49

Twin sisters who were born within minutes of each other have shared how one photograph led to an extremely rare discovery about their true parentage.

Lavinia and Michelle Osbourne grew up believing that they had the same parents and who could question it when they were born at the same time, but as the years progressed, Michelle became more and more confused about who her father actually was.

She never felt a connection with their mother's boyfriend James, who she had long claimed was both of their fathers, but it later emerged that he was only the father to Lavinia.

And it was spotting a photo of James, around 10 years after she last spoke to him, that led Michelle to seek out a DNA test as it dawned on her that he simply couldn't be her father.

Speaking on This Morning, Michelle said: "Seeing my father on Facebook. I saw a photograph of him, and I hadn't seen him for 10 years. When you grow older you start to look more and more like your parents, or more like their brother or sister. I looked at this man who I hadn't seen in so long, sitting next to his son from a current relationship. I thought 'this guy is definitely not related to us'. He looked like a ghost in comparison to us. I was trying to find a connection and I just realised that this guy was not our father. That pushed me to get this test."

Lavinia and Michelle Osbourne

At this point, Michelle and Lavinia's mother was unwell so couldn't give them the answers they were looking for, so they instead took a DNA test back in 2022.

This revealed an incredibly rare discovery which confirmed that despite being born just minutes apart, the two were in fact half-sisters rather than twins, since they had a different father.

Heartbreakingly, the results came through on the same day that their mother died, with Lavinia reluctantly also agreeing to the test after discovering her results.

The phenomenon is something known as 'heteropaternal superfecundation' - a rare occurrence which happens when a woman releases more than one egg, from two different partners during the same menstrual cycle.

The egg must then be fertilised by the two different fathers with the embryos growing inside the mother's belly before being born at the same time.

It was so rare that it is the first documented case in British history, with fewer than 20 cases recorded on a global scale, which sums up just how rare a situation this is.

Since she had long questioned her connection to the man her mother described as her father, it didn't come as much of a shock to Michelle.

She added: "We're so different. I'm still in amazement that this can actually happen – it's super weird, super odd, super rare – but, if I apply it to myself, it makes sense."

Lavinia was much more emotionally tortured by the revelation, though.

"For about a month, I couldn't stop crying," she said. "[Michelle] was the one thing that belonged to me. The one thing I was sure of. And then she wasn't."