10 Ancient Animal Species that Still Exist
10. Red Panda
These cute, furry, bamboo nibbling, endangered red panda shares a common
ancestor with the black and white panda
but unlike them they do not belong in the bear family.
Remains of the red panda like creatures have been found in Eastern Europe
and North America that dates back to as far as 25 million years.
For a long time, the red panda was classified as racoons
because of their masked faces and ringed tails
which helps them balance on the trees.
They also use their front paws into rivers to scoop water for drinking
but DNA testing has finally made scientists to classify them into
a new family group called Ailuridae which consists of the red panda
and its ancestors.
Other than their favourite food which is the bamboo, they also eat insects, eggs, small
birds, rodents and fruits.
Better than the common panda which only eats bamboo but has a horrible time
digesting them since the common panda are supposed to be carnivors.
9. Sumatran Rhinoceros
They came from a 50 million years old lineage.
Also known as the hairy rhinoceros or the Asian two-horned rhinoceros.
They are the smallest of all the rhinoceros that currently exists
and has a coat of reddish brown hair that covers most of its body.
They once inhabited rainforests and swamps of
india, bhutan, bangladesh, laos, myanmar thailand, malaysia, indonesia and
china
but now they are critically endangered as there are
less than 100 of them currently alive.
8. Giant River Stingray
It is a stingray that lives in a river and
It can be around 6.2 ft to up to 16 feet across, 600 kg in weight and
has a spiky, poisoned barbed stinger that could be around 15-inches long.
The barb are known to impale body parts and may even skewer and penetrate bones.
The freshwater stingray have been estimated to evolve about
100 million years ago and they live in the Southern Hemisphere such as
Thailand, New Guinea, Borneo and even Australia.
This is because they like to live in rivers where the rivers are mostly
murky for better camouflage.
Like most of the animals on this list, it is also facing the problem of
becoming extinct very soon.
7. Purple Frog
The purple frog is one of the longest surviving species of the frog family
where they have evolved to how they are now
around 130 million years ago.
Thus making it the sole survivor of its prehistoric amphibian relatives.
From its face, you could see that it doesn't look like a frog,
rather the colour, fatness and that pink point on its face
makes it look like a mole. A slimy mole.
Very different from how the other frogs we know look like.
They would only emerge from the underground for about 2 weeks
during the monsoon season for the purpose of mating.
Just like moles, they would live underground and
feed mainly on termites using their tongue.
6 Chinese Giant Salamander
This is the largest salamander and amphibian in the world
that could reach a length of up to 180 cm
which means its bigger than me.
It is a part of the Cryptobranchidea lineage which dates back
to 170 million years ago.
Like most ancient animals, they are on the verge of being extinct
not just because of loss of habitat from pollution,
they are also over hunted as it is considered a delicacy
and have been used in traditional Chinese medicine.
They may get aggressive during their mating season where
the male might fight against each other
to their deaths but they don't seek to eat humans.
5. Tadpole Shrimp
It is considered a living fossil because its basic prehistoric morphology has
changed very little
exactly matching the bodies of their ancient ancestors that
inhabited Earth as early as some 220 million years ago.
They have a broad, flat carapace which conceals its head and
bears a single pair of compound eyes.
They are omnivores that eats small animals such as
fish and fairy shrimp.
They are found to live on the bottom of shallow lakes
and could be found world wide.
4. Lamprey
These creatures seem to come from nightmares.
I can't stand seeing how they look so I'm going to make this short.
They are eel like parasites with a circular mouth that are filled
with dozens and dozens of small,
sharp teeth that would latch onto any suitable host and suck their blood.
They exist way back to around 360 million years ago, a scientist
found a lamprey fossil and confirmed it
was essentially the same as the lampreys alive today.
3. Horseshoe Crab
They look like horse's hooves.
These crustacean-like thing is not a crab but are much
more related to arachnids than a crustacean.
The fossils found of them dates back to almost 450 million years
and there seem to have very little to no change from what is found now.
They are the prey for birds and some fish while
they only search for worms or molluscs for food.
They usually swim upside-down, inclined at about 30 degree to
the horizontal and moving at about 10 -15 cm/s (0.22 - 0.34 mph).
Also that dangerous looking rigid tail is not dangerous as its
only purpose is to flip the animal over if it's turned upside down.
2. Nautilus
The nautilus have been on earth for around 500 million years.
It survived a lot of major events throughout the globe all this
years but now it is finally in danger of becoming extinct.
This is because it has been overfished just because of how cool
they would look like for people's collection or home decoration.
The way the nautilus swim is by drawing water in and out of
its living chambers and uses jet propulsion.
Like a little alien submarine is what I think when seeing this creature.
They are scavengers and an opportunistic predator. They may eat lobsters, hermit crabs and carrion
of any kind.
1. Jelly Fish
The jelly fish was always known to be a very ancient species
but only until 2007 was the jelly fish said to
exist even before there was any land-dwelling creatures at all
as they found a fossil that goes back to over half a billion years old.
Jellyfish are found worldwide in every ocean from the
surface to the deep deep sea.
and there are also some types of jellyfish that live in freshwater.
We always see how beautiful they are just floating about
in the waters but this is how their life cycle is:
They start of in their larva stage, become polyps which buds into ephyrae
and then transform into an adult medusae
where they reproduce by either sexually or asexually.
But usually its just a hit and miss by releasing their eggs
and sperms in the water in hopes of getting fertilized.