What are living fossils?

Answer 1

Living fossils are animals that lived several million years ago and were gyped of evolutionary changes over time.

Meaning, they look the same now as they did back then.

Answer 2

A living fossil has 2 definitions. One is Old People. They are sometimes referred to as Living Fossils. :) The other would be creatures or plants that exhibit ancient physiology. They could also have once been thought to be extinct and then found not to be. I've also heard of insects preserved in amber as being living fossils even though they are dead.

Answer 3

Pretty well everything alive today is a living fossil. What differs is the amount of time that a creature has existed in roughly the same form. There is no clockwork mechanism that dictates change per unit time. Things vary. We can describe the variation through statistics, and both longevity of individual and longevity of species presents a skewed normal distribution. Most things have similar life spans, whether as an individual or a species. Rare things last for extraordinarily long times. In detail, actually, most of your examples are not of species, and the different examples display quite distinct "lifetimes" (speciestimes to invent a word). Some things are luckier than others, is one way of thinking about it. They aren't forced to change or die. Some manage to survive because they found a little hole, a niche, that itself persists, but the lifeform was wiped out pretty well everywhere else. I think the issue here is simply one of how to interpret reality. You expect the unexpected to be impossible. It is not, it is simply unlikely in a specific sense, and actually quite likely in a universal sense (the rare thing will occur, rarely, if enough throws of the dice are made, and time is very very long with lots of dice throws).

Answer 4

Anyone over 45 like my husband and I. No really, it is any living organism which has not changed significantly since "prehistory".
For example the recent spate of news about the frill shark captured in Japan, shows an animal that would be described as a living fossil. Another example would be the Colecanth fish.

Answer 5

A living fossil is an organism that lived during ancient times and still live today, relatively unchanged, like the horseshoe crab. The Coelacanth is another good example.

Answer 6

The term "Living fossils" is used when referring to currently living species that have not evolved much over millions of years. Examples of this would be crocodiles, nautilus, coelacanths (a ancient looking fish) and ginko trees. They looked about the same as they did during the time of the dinosaurs.

Answer 7

Back in Pearl City we had a 105 year old man who lived down the corner from me. We called him a living fossil.

Answer 8

living fossils are organisms that are found both in the fossil record and are still existant today. Classic examples are the ferns, the gingko tree, the wollimeni pine, norfolk pine, horseshoe crab, enchinoderms like sea urchins, sponges, and others. While it is impossible to accurately discern what genetic changes might have occurred, their morphology is identical (so it is assumed they are genetically identical). Contrary to another poster's assertion, these organisms weren't gipped out of evolutionary development, rather they were so successful in their chosen niche they didn't have to.

Answer 9

A living fossil is any plant or animal that has remained essentially unchanged from earlier geologic times and whose near close relatives are usually extinct.

Answer 10

Well er,eh maybe we need a definition.
Fossils are ancient bones from long dead creatures.
Although I do know a bunch of old coots who may fill the bill.