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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.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Talk about nature's most eccentric experiment, and you have the platypus, a mammal that lays eggs, secretes venom, and uses electroreception to hunt underwater.
The coelacanth was long considered a "living fossil" because scientists thought it was the sole remaining member of a taxon otherwise known only from fossils, with no close relatives alive, [8] and that it evolved into roughly its current form approximately 400 million years ago. [1]
A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group. [1] This is especially important where the descendant group is sharply differentiated by gross anatomy and mode of living from the ancestral group.
The structures are considered to be one of the oldest ecosystems on Earth, according to NASA, representing the earliest fossil evidence for life on our planet from at least 3½ billion years ago.
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.
A digital recreation of Baiera made from diverse images of fossils and academic descriptions. Ginkgo biloba is a living fossil, with fossils recognisably related to modern ginkgo from the early Permian , with likely oldest record being that of Trichopitys from the earliest Permian of France, over 290 million years old. [47]
Within the lagoons are living fossils called giant stromatolites, or layered rocks created by algae and minerals such as gypsum and rock salt. The inhospitable environment of the high salt plains ...