Here are a few of the most fascinating living fossils!
10 - Pig Nosed Turtle With a nose like a pig and flippers on their
feet, Pig Nosed turtles look like no creature we’ve ever seen before.
Although a few studies have been done in the wild, Pig Nosed Turtles in captivity have
been known to show aggression.
This might suggest they’re more territorial than many of their turtle peers.
They’re the last surviving member of their family making them a living fossil.
The term living fossil is a loosely defined term that’s generally associated with species
that haven’t changed much at all, and at least closely resemble other species that
we otherwise only know as fossils.
Living Fossils are pretty important for a few reasons.
Mostly, they provide a window into an ancient biological world that we’d otherwise only
know through fossil records.
Also despite the appearance of a lack of evolution, Living Fossils provide a tangible example
of Stabilizing Selection, an important stage in the evolutionary process.
These interesting turtles are found mainly in freshwater streams, rivers and lagoons
in Northern Australia and In New Guinea as well.
Because of their bizarre appearance, they’ve become popular among exotic pet traders.
Even though laws in places such as Indonesia prohibit the trade of these turtles, authorities
have confiscated some 10,000 turtles from smugglers back in 2010.
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9 - The Purple Frog The Purple Frog has almost a cartoonish like
appearance.
Kinda like a Pokemon character or something!
In 2003 when researchers discovered the species, they described it as looking like a bloated
doughnut with stubby legs and a pointed snout.
As unflattering a description as that is and as odd as they may be to look at, national
Geographic dubbed their discovery an “Once in a Century” occurrence in 2003.
It’s believed they’re the successors to an ancient frog lineage that evolved roughly
130 million years ago along with dinosaurs.
Found in the Western Ghat Mountain range in India, these frogs were only distantly related
to a group of frogs living in the The Seychelles in Africa.
Other than that, they have no living relatives.
But we do know that they’ve been around for at least 100 million years!
8 - Vampire Squid Vampire Squids are one of those creatures
you have to see to believe.
Aside from having a pretty cool name and a crazy appearance, they’re also biologically
significant.
Scientifically they’re known as Vampyroteuthis infernalis which translates to “Vampire
squid from hell.”
That’s a bit extreme if you ask me.
They pretty much just float around eating these floating particles called “Marine
Snow.”
Not much is known about the behavior as they have trouble surviving in captivity, and an
artificial environment makes their non-defensive behavior unreliable anyways.
They’re hard to observe in their natural environment because of where they live.
Given their low metabolic rate, vampire squids have to use some interesting tactics to conserve
energy while avoiding their predators.
They’ll eject a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus that are essentially orbs of blue light.
This probably acts to daze predators and allows the vampire squid to disappear into the blackness
without the need to swim far.
Combine that with the writhing of glowing arms and erratic movements, vampire squids
make it difficult for its predator to identify a single target.
Now, as far as the living fossil business goes.
The Vampire Squid can date its lineage back to ancient Octopi some 165 million years ago.
Pretty impressive to live that long while being tired all the time right?
7 - Elephant Shark If we were to do some sort of word association
test here, I doubt elephant and shark would match up.
But Elephant Sharks absolutely exist, and they’re quite distinct for a number of reasons.
For starters, it’s theorized that these guys are the slowest evolving creatures!
Their genomes have evolved so slowly that they’re the closest living thing to the
first jawed vertebrates that emerged some 450 million years ago!
Also elephant sharks aren’t technically sharks.
They actually belong to the ratfish family, which was once related to the shark family,
but they split off roughly 400 million years ago.
Also known as The Australian Ghost Shark, this unique fish is considered important in
understanding the origin and evolution of vertebrate genomes, genomes that include the
human genome.
So yea, they’re kind of a big deal!
6 - Horseshoe Crabs The presence of Horseshoe crabs on Planet
Earth dates back an impressive 300 million years!
And in case you’re keeping score at home, that makes them older than dinosaurs!
Weirdly enough, despite their designation as a Living Fossil, they have more in common
with spiders than they do with prehistoric crabs.
Horseshoe Crabs populate diverse regions in oceans across the globe.
Primarily found in the Atlantic Ocean across the United States coastlines, species of Horseshoe
crabs can also be found in the Gulf Coast of Mexico, the Indian Ocean and in the Pacific
along the coastline of Asia.
Armed with 10 legs and a hard shell, these crabs prefer to feast at night.
Worms, clams and algae are typically on the menu.
Oddly enough, they don’t have any teeth, so they just crush their food with their front
claws until it’s small enough for them to swallow whole.
Don’t try doing that at home!
Each year their mating ritual begins when the guy crabs make the trek to the shore.
That’s where they wait for the ladies to arrive.
Once female crabs shows up, the females release some sort of chemical pheromone that attracts
the males.
From there, they do the dirty deed and the female crab proceeds to lay tens of thousands
of eggs.
In fact, if you ever find yourself near the Delaware Bay in May and June during a full
moon or high tide, hundreds of thousands of Horseshoe Crabs will gather on the beach and
you can catch a show!
Most of eggs laid become easy meals for birds, reptiles and fish.
Most eggs won’t make to to the larval stage.
For those who do, they can live for up to 20 years...sometimes more!
5 - Hoatzin Stinkbird, Canje Pheasant...whatever unpleasant
sounding name you wanna give it, the Hoatzin is probably used to it because they’ve been
around so long!
These tropical birds are found in the swamps and mangroves of the Amazon.
Looking almost like a creature straight out of ancient mythology, these birds are thought
to be the last surviving member of birdline that branched off after all non winged dinosaurs
went extinct in dramatic fashion.
While there IS some debate over the exact age of a few of the fossil records, there’s
little doubt that these birds are pretty adaptive.
Their young have the ability to swim, so they can retreat to water if needed.
As adults, they prefer dense trees and shrubs and often hang out in groups.
Their diet is pretty similar to cows, weirdly enough.
They prefer eating leaves and buds.
And it would appear their population is pretty healthy and in no immediate threat...so they’ll
be here for a few million more years!
4 - Monito Del Monte Monito Del Monte….that kind of sounds like
a cool place to vacation.
But it’s not a vacation destination at all.
The name is Spanish for “Little Monkey of the Mountain.”
These little Marsupials are found in South America, primarily in Argentina and Chile.
As nocturnal creatures, they hunt at night for insects and fruit and prefer to live in
thickets of South American Bamboo.
It’s there that they make these interesting waterproof nests out of leaves and moss.
Rewind a few million years and hop across the ocean to Queensland, Australia.
Ancient Marsupial Bones were found on a farm in Queensland.
This ancient mouse-like creature is believed to have lived some 55 million years ago and
is known scientifically as Djarthia.
Djarthia is possibly “the mother of all the continent's unusual pouched mammals, such
as kangaroos and koalas.”
Initially, Marsupials made their way to Australia from South America via Antarctica.
Of course, this was millions of years ago when the three continents were formed together
as a supercontinent called Gondwana.
Scientists have theorized that Monito Del Monte made the journey back to South America
maybe around 40 million years ago.
While they’ve been around for at least 55 million years, their future is a little less
certain.
As deforestation destroys their habitat and the introduction of domestic cats to the region
makes them easy prey, their numbers have declined over the past few decades.
Currently they’re considered to be be “near threatened” and conservation efforts at
the moment are pretty limited.
3 - Red Panda The Red Panda is just one of those rare creatures
that makes you go whoa when you see one.
These majestic creatures are native to the Himalayan Mountains and parts of China.
Their red-brown fur and their bushy tail make them kinda look like a cross between a red
fox and a raccoon.
But these mammals are in fact the only non-extinct member of the Ailuridae family, a family close
to the raccoon family.
Despite their name, they have very little in common with The Giant Panda.
In fact, the two don’t share too many evolutionary traits.
The name probably stems from the fact that they eat bamboo, much like Panda Bears.
As expert climbers, they can scurry up a tree and snag some bamboo for dinner.
And just like their namesake, they don’t digest Cellulose, so they need to eat a lot
of this stuff.
If they get tired of having bamboo all the time, sometimes they will eat small mammals
or birds.
Sadly there are fewer than 10,000 Red Pandas still alive in the wild, and they are considered
endangered by The IUCN.
Countries such as China, India and Nepal have outlawed hunting Red Pandas and have designated
protected areas for them in an effort to stabilize the population.
2 - The Tuatara Tuataras may look like lizards, but they belong
to an ancient line of reptiles dating back at least 200 million years.
The Tuatara is the only living member of the order of Rhynchocephalia.
Because of this ancient link and because they share an ancestor with lizards and snakes,
these guys are pretty important in studying the evolution of lizards and snakes.
Found only in New Zealand and the surrounding islands, this species is the subject of intense
conservation efforts.
Despite not being all that big, at around 1 and a half feet long, they’re New Zealand’s
largest reptiles.
They feed mostly on Spiders, Millipedes, worms and beetles.
They’re armed with this cool looking crest of spines that’s used to attract potential
mates during mating season and helpful during fights with other males.
Unfortunately like several of the other Living Fossils on our list, they face threats to
their survival.
Habitat loss is one issue, poaching is a big problem as well.
Another threat is their low genetic diversity.
It’s a serious problem for them as it makes them more vulnerable to habitat changes and
new pathogens.
Current conservation efforts center around keeping rodents that compete with them for
resources out of their habitats and reintroducing Tuatara to rodent free islands.
1 - Giant Chinese Salamander You guys ever see a giant Chinese Salamander
in real life?
It has the status of being not only the largest Salamander in the world, but also the largest
amphibian on the planet.
Reaching impressive lengths of 5 feet and nine inches these guys are longer than some
people are tall!
Their existence dates back around 170 million years.
As the name “Chinese Salamander” would suggest, these large amphibians lives in….wait
for it….China.
Typically found in rocky mountain streams and lakes, they’ve also been introduced
in surrounding regions, such as Japan.
Sadly, these amazing creatures have experienced a sharp decline in their population in recent
years.
The reasons for this are the usual culprits, such as habitat loss, overhunting, and climate
change.
These factors have led to something like an 80 percent decline in their population over
the past several decades.
The Chinese government is currently making efforts to conserve the species.
Let’s hope they’re successful.
Here’s what’s next!