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A living fossil is a deprecated term for 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.
The ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) is a living fossil, with fossils similar to the modern plant dating back to the Permian, 270 million years ago.The closest living relatives of the clade are the cycads, [4] which share with the extant G. biloba the characteristic of motile sperm.
Equisetum (/ ˌ ɛ k w ɪ ˈ s iː t əm /; horsetail) is the only living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds. [2]Equisetum is a "living fossil", the only living genus of the entire subclass Equisetidae, which for over 100 million years was much more diverse and dominated the understorey of late Paleozoic forests.
Plant fossils almost always represent disarticulated parts of plants; even small herbaceous plants are rarely preserved whole. The few examples of plant fossils that appear to be the remains of whole plants are in fact incomplete as the internal cellular tissue and fine micromorphological detail is normally lost during fossilization.
Laguna de Bacalar in Mexico's southern Yucatán Peninsula has an extensive formation of living giant microbialites (that is, stromatolites or thrombolites). The microbialite bed is over 10 km (6.2 mi) long with a vertical rise of several meters in some areas. These may be the largest sized living freshwater microbialites, or any organism, on Earth.
They are one of the oldest lineages of extant (living) vascular plants; the group contains extinct plants that have been dated from the Silurian (ca. 425 million years ago). [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Lycophytes were some of the dominating plant species of the Carboniferous period, and included the tree-like Lepidodendrales , some of which grew over 40 metres ...
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Recently, the living fossil Dapsilidinium pastielsii was found inhabiting the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, which served as a refugium for thermophilic dinoflagellates, [153] and others such as Calciodinellum operosum and Posoniella tricarinelloides were also described from fossils before later being found alive. [154] [155]