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Other than myself there are many living relics, many have
been known for a long time and some are more recent discoveries. Sometimes these
the term 'living fossils' is used, first used by
Charles Darwin in his
The Origin of Species, when discussing the platypus
and the South American lungfish he said....
"...we find some of the most anomalous forms now known in the world,
as the Ornithorhynchus (platypus) and Lepidosiren(lungfish),
which, like fossils, connect to a certain extent orders now widely separated
in the natural scale. These anomalous forms may almost be called living
fossils; they have endured to the present day, from having inhabited a
confined area, and from having thus been exposed to less severe
competition."
Amphibians
The
Purple
frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis) is a strange
burrowing frog whose only known habitat is in the Western Ghat Mountains
of southern India.
Birds
Want to meet a dinosaur, say hello to your canary! Yes, your canary is
basically similar to a dinosaur XXXXX Of the bird the
Hoatzin
(Ophisthocomus hoazin) is perhaps the best example of
a living relic, this strange pheasant sizzed bird has claws on its wings.
Fish
The
Coelacanth
(Latimeria menadoensis and Latimeria chalumnae)
is one of the most famous 'living relics', a fish thought extinct for 65 million
years turns up in a fishermans net in 1931. Our own
Queensland lungfish (Neoceratodus fosteri) belongs
to the very ancient group Sarcopterygii, the fleshy-finned fishes from over 400
million years ago. Fossils of fish identical to N. forsteri have been dated at
over 100 million years which makes this species one of the oldest living
vertebrate species.
Mammals
The Marsupials could all be
considered living relics. Surviving on the Australian Arc these creatures died
out over the rest of the planet, with the single other exception of the South
American Opussum. Even more primitive in form are the
Monotremes
, these egg laying mammals are represented today by the
Platypus
and echidnas.
The placental mammals have a few true 'relics'. The
Laotian Rock Rat (Laonastes aenigmamus)
belongs to a family which had only been known from
fossils, the
Diatomyidae. The last Diatomyidae fossils are from the
Miocene, leaving an 11 million year gap in the fossil record.
The
Mountain Beaver (Aplodontia rufa) which is
actually is unrelated to beavers, is considered a 'living fossil' due to
the presence of a host of primitive features.
Some consider the recently discovered
cypriot mouse (Mus cypriacus)
a living fossil, as it is the only endemic
rodent still alive on the Mediterranean islands
that managed to survive the arrival of man, with the
exception of two species of shrew.
Reptiles
A number of reptiles could be considered as they have continued These
Our earliest
fish-like ancestors, evolved with a third hole in their skulls and an eye that
connected directly to the brain called the pineal eye. It appears that this
adaptation became converted over time to a small organ associated with the
control of hormone production — the pineal body or gland.
tadpoles, other
amphibians, and some of the lizards, among them the Tuatara, a living relic
lizard of the Sphenodont group, a third centrally located eye has remained
although the function is not fully understood. It is sensitive to changes in
light and dark, but it does not form images, having only a rudimentary retina
and lens.
Sharks
Sharks in a good example of how a good design just keeps going, more or less for 350
million years! You could consider them all 'living fossils' as there has been so
little change in the basic design. Nonetheless a few deserve special mention.
The Frill Shark is a good example how the sea
is able to hide living relics! The Megamouth
shark is an example of a 'found' cryptid, and it also generated a hoax.
surviving today in the swamps of the Orinoco basin of
South America. It is a bird as strange and bizarre as its name, hoatzin, and has
succeeded in foxing zoologists for years as to the origins of its odd
characteristics. Unable to decide whether it is truly primitive or just an
evolutionary throwback, scientists have shelved the problem and placed the
hoatzin, Opisthocomus hoazin, in a family or even an order all by itself.
Many features distinguish the hoatzin from other birds, not least of which is
its voice which sounds more like a heavy smoker's wheezing than a bird call.
About the size of a rather slender, upright pheasant, the hoatzin has an untidy
crest of feathers, blood-red eyes encircled by bright blue skin, a long neck and
long tail feathers. But perhaps the most interesting characteristic is the
presence of claws on the wings and these, although useless to the heavy adult
bird, are employed by the youngster to clamber among the branches near the nest-
just as Archaeopteryx must have done so many millions of years ago.
The main function of the wing claws, it seems, is to assist the young hoatzin in
times of crisis. The nest is normally built on branches overhanging water and is
thus exposed to the eyes of marauding hawks. It is a rudely constructed platform
of short twigs of roughly pencil thickness. If danger threatens, the parents
usually abandon the nest for the safety of dense bushes nearby. The chick, left
to its own devices, either uses the wing claws to help it clamber through the
branches to some inaccessible spot, or dives into the water and emerges farther
downstream to clamber back to 'the nest once the danger has passed.
- Animals
 | Vertebrates
 | Mammals
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 | Birds
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 | Reptiles
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 | Fish
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 | Sharks
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 | Amphibians
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 | Invertebrates
 | Insects
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 | Crustaceans
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 | Other invertebrates
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The term was first coined by
Charles Darwin in his
The Origin of Species, when discussing
Ornithorhynchus (the platypus) and
Lepidosiren (the South American lungfish). On page 49,
he wrote:
"...All fresh-water basins, taken together, make a
small area compared with that of the sea or of the land;
and, consequently, the competition between fresh-water
productions will have been less severe than elsewhere; new
forms will have been more slowly formed, and old forms more
slowly exterminated. And it is in fresh water that we find
seven genera of Ganoid fishes, remnants of a once
preponderant order: and in fresh water we find some of the
most anomalous forms now known in the world, as the
Ornithorhynchus and Lepidosiren, which, like
fossils, connect to a certain extent orders now widely
separated in the natural scale. These anomalous forms may
almost be called living fossils; they have endured to the
present day, from having inhabited a confined area, and from
having thus been exposed to less severe competition."
[edit]
Other definitions
There are quite a lot of (ambiguous) definitions denoting
living fossils:
 | A living species that lived through a large portion of
geologic time |
- To prove this, all living specimens must belong to the
same fossil species. This rules out Limulus,
Peripatus, Latimeria, Sphenodon,
Didelphis, the platypus, and many others. To allow some
flexibility, the genus could be used.
Paleontological
taxonomy relies on hard-part
morphology (the paleontological
species concept), so there is a bias towards longer
species turnover times, and relationships can only be
inferred partially. Modern molecular biology has shown that
genetic rates of change are relatively uniform and not well
related to morphological change rates. So from a more
molecular basis of interbreeding capabilities there are
essentially no such thing as species that lived through a
long geological time. However, with the proviso that we are
using the special case of a paleontological species name,
the definition does hold together in context.
- The living specimens need not belong to the same fossil
species (or even genus). There must at least be some
physiological resemblance.
- The coelacanth for example, is a marine fish. The
Mesozoic coelacanth species lived in salt and fresh
water.
Osmoregulation in Latimeria is handled by
ureum retention. Ureum retention is considered to be an
indication of fresh water ancestry. This means that the
coelacanth lineage has evolved from freshwater to saltwater.
- The resemblance between Peripatus and
Aysheaia (an early
Cambrian animal from the
Burgess Shale) is striking (as of now, both are
classified in the
Tardipolypoda (Tardigrada
and Onychophora), were it not that Aysheaia was a
marine animal, while Peripatus lives in tropical leaf
mould.
 | A living species/clade with many primitive
characteristics |
- This is a more neutral definition. However, it does not
make it clear whether the taxon is truly old, or it simply
has many plesiomorphies. Note that, as mentioned above, the
converse may hold for true living fossil taxa; that is, they
may possess a great many derived features (autapomorphies),
and not be particularly "primitive" in appearance.
- Some paleontologists consider "living fossils" with
large distributions (such as Triops cancriformis) not
to be real living fossils. In the case of Triops
cancriformis (living from the
Triassic until now), the Triassic specimens have lost
most of their appendages (mostly only
carapaces remain), and they haven't been thoroughly
examined since
1938.
- An organism's living fossil status can be rejected if
the (smallest) clade the species belongs to is species rich,
as this would imply (recent) speciation.
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