Ben Garrod takes a look at what is meant by a living fossil <\/p>
<\/b>\u00a0 The phrase \u2018living fossil\u2019 is both widely used and widely argued over. It refers to an \u2018archaic\u2019 species that has survived for a long time, whose anatomy harks back to an early stage in the group\u2019s evolutionary tree and has remained unchanged for much of that period.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> There are several species that are often referred to as living fossils, including coelacanths, horseshoe crabs, tuataras and nautiloids.<\/p>\n The tree Ginko biloba for example is the only living species of its group and dates back almost 300 million years in the fossil record. However, some species are more problematic \u2013 even okapi are considered by some as \u2018living fossils\u2019, yet have only existed for 15\u201320 million years.<\/p>\n The problem with the term \u2018living fossil\u2019 is the definition of \u2018a long time\u2019 and \u2018remained unchanged\u2019. Is a million years a long time, or does it need to be 65 million years? And many species remain largely unchanged for millions of years \u2013 even frogs have looked the same for that long \u2013 but we don\u2019t call them \u2018living fossils\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Main image: Tuatara, Stephens Island, New Zealand \u00a9 Getty Images<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Ben Garrod takes a look at what is meant by a living fossil <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":28775,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/05\/what-is-a-living-fossil.jpg",1024,681,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/05\/what-is-a-living-fossil-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/05\/what-is-a-living-fossil-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/05\/what-is-a-living-fossil-768x511.jpg",768,511,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/05\/what-is-a-living-fossil.jpg",800,532,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/05\/what-is-a-living-fossil.jpg",1024,681,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/05\/what-is-a-living-fossil.jpg",1024,681,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Ben Garrod takes a look at what is meant by a living fossil","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/28774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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