Organism resembling a form long shown in the fossil record
"Living Fossil" redirects here. For the story by L. Sprague de Camp, see Living Fossil (short story).
The coelacanths were thought to have gone extinct 66 million years ago, until a living specimen belonging to the order was discovered in 1938.
A living fossil is an extant taxon that phenotypically resembles related species known only from the fossil record. To be considered a living fossil, the fossil species must be old relative to the time of origin of the extant clade. Living fossils commonly are of species-poor lineages, but they need not be. While the body plan of a living fossil remains superficially similar, it is never the same species as the remote relatives it resembles, because genetic drift would inevitably change its chromosomal structure.
Living fossils exhibit stasis (also called "bradytely") over geologically long time scales. Popular literature may wrongly claim that a "living fossil" has undergone no significant evolution since fossil times, with practically no molecular evolution or morphological changes. Scientific investigations have repeatedly discredited such claims.[1][2][3]
The minimal superficial changes to living fossils are mistakenly declared as an absence of evolution, but they are examples of stabilizing selection, which is an evolutionary process—and perhaps the dominant process of morphological evolution.[4]
^Casane, Didier; Laurenti, Patrick (2013-04-01). "Why coelacanths are not 'living fossils'". BioEssays. 35 (4): 332–338. doi:10.1002/bies.201200145. ISSN 1521-1878. PMID 23382020. S2CID 2751255.
^Mathers, Thomas C.; Hammond, Robert L.; Jenner, Ronald A.; Hänfling, Bernd; Gómez, Africa (2013). "Multiple global radiations in tadpole shrimps challenge the concept of 'living fossils'". PeerJ. 1: e62. doi:10.7717/peerj.62. PMC 3628881. PMID 23638400.
^Grandcolas, Philippe; Nattier, Romain; Trewick, Steve (2014-01-12). "Relict species: a relict concept?". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 29 (12): 655–663. Bibcode:2014TEcoE..29..655G. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2014.10.002. ISSN 0169-5347. PMID 25454211.
^Lynch, M (1990). "The rate of evolution in mammals from the standpoint of the neutral expectation". The American Naturalist. 136 (6): 727–741. doi:10.1086/285128. S2CID 11055926.
A livingfossil is an extant taxon that phenotypically resembles related species known only from the fossil record. To be considered a livingfossil, the...
A fossil (from Classical Latin fossilis, lit. 'obtained by digging') is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past...
A fossil fuel is a carbon compound- or hydrocarbon-containing material such as coal, oil, and natural gas, formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the...
Fossil Group, Inc., is an American fashion designer and manufacturer founded in 1984 by Tom Kartsotis and based in Richardson, Texas. Their brands include...
ago, but were discovered living off the coast of South Africa in 1938. The coelacanth was long considered a "livingfossil" because scientists thought...
is the last living species in the order Ginkgoales, which first appeared over 290 million years ago, and fossils very similar to the living species, belonging...
Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas–Not Less is a 2022 book by Alex Epstein that argues in support of...
Living dinosaur may refer to: Birds, the only known living dinosaurs Livingfossils, extant taxa that closely resemble organisms otherwise known only...
years, nautiluses represent the only living members of the subclass Nautiloidea, and are often considered "livingfossils". The word nautilus is derived from...
Some plants of prehistory are the same ones around today and are thus livingfossils, such as Ginkgo biloba and Sciadopitys verticillata. Other plants have...
were found alive in central China. It is a well-known example of a livingfossil species. The tree faces considerable risks of extinction in its wild...
Fossil water, fossil groundwater, or paleowater is an ancient body of water that has been contained in some undisturbed space, typically groundwater in...
sharply differentiated by gross anatomy and mode of living from the ancestral group. These fossils serve as a reminder that taxonomic divisions are human...
is the sole living member of the family Sciadopityaceae and genus Sciadopitys, a livingfossil with no close relatives. The oldest fossils of Sciadopitys...
R. (1984). "Cephalocarida: livingfossil without a fossil record". In N. Eldredge; S. M. Stanley (eds.). LivingFossils. New York: Springer Verlag. pp...
Japan. The sole living member of the family Sciadopityaceae is Sciadopitys verticillata, a livingfossil.[citation needed] The oldest fossils of Sciadopitys...
shark (Chlamydoselachus africana)). The frilled shark is considered a livingfossil, because of its primitive, anguilliform (eel-like) physical traits,...
biloba) is a livingfossil, with fossils similar to the modern plant dating back to the Permian, 270 million years ago. The closest living relatives of...
subfamily Sequoioideae. M. glyptostroboides is the only living species in its genus, but three fossil species are known. Sequoioideae and several other genera...
developed during the late Ordovician period. They are first represented in the fossil record from the Silurian by two groups of fish: the armoured fish known...
with living representatives (approximately 30) were discovered before 1900. Jenkins et al. did not compare the specimens to known rodent fossils. After...
semichelate) chelipeds. This group of decapods is a good example of a livingfossil, or a lazarus taxon, since until their discovery in the 1970s, the group...
Paleodictyon is a trace fossil, usually interpreted to be a burrow, which appears in the geologic marine record beginning in the Precambrian/Early Cambrian...
Holocene List of dinosaur genera List of fossil bird genera List of Late Quaternary prehistoric bird species List of fossil primates Lists of prehistoric fish...
unique features in their skeleton. Tuatara are sometimes referred to as "livingfossils", which has generated significant scientific debate. This term is currently...
living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds. Equisetum is a "livingfossil", the only living...
the Early Triassic. As such, the extant forms have been described as "livingfossils". The last common ancestor of the four present species is estimated...
Gnetum and Ephedra. Informal sources commonly refer to the plant as a "livingfossil". Welwitschia is named after the Austrian botanist and doctor Friedrich...
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