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08-23-2008
| | Questioning | | Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: South Africa
Posts: 192
| | | Your favourite "living fossils"?
I'm doing an article on the topic, which is more directed towards the popular and high school market than most of the stuff I write, and wondered which animals, plants and other almost unchanged from the dawn of time organisms to include in a frozen-in-time top 10.
I'd definitely include the coelacanth, which must have been the most amazing living transitional species find ever. The tuatara, as the last remaining sphenodont, is right up there. My favourite backyard living fossil is my tulip tree. (Have a closer look if you're in doubt - the flowers are midway between twigs and blossoms, and the fruit look remarkably like gymnosperm cones. Don't know what to make of the leaves, though...) On second thoughts, my ginkgo may be more deserving, but I don't know what to make of its leaves, either. |
08-23-2008
|  | Understanding | | Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: My World
Posts: 470
| | | Re: Your favourite "living fossils"?
Can Squid be one?
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While you are busily finding your road, road is looking for you too. |
08-23-2008
|  | Creating | | Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,537
| | | Re: Your favourite "living fossils"?
Cycads 
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I do not know what I seem to the world, but to myself I appear to have been like a boy playing upon the seashore and diverting myself by now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered. - Sir Isaac Newton |
08-23-2008
| | Creating | | Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,537
| | | Re: Your favourite "living fossils"?
Quote: |
The Marchantiophyta are a division of bryophyte plants commonly referred to as hepatics or liverworts. Like other bryophytes, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of genetic information
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I do not know what I seem to the world, but to myself I appear to have been like a boy playing upon the seashore and diverting myself by now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered. - Sir Isaac Newton
Last edited by Thunderbird; 08-23-2008 at 05:23 PM.
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08-23-2008
| | Creating | | Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,537
| | | Re: Your favourite "living fossils"?
Nautilus 
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I do not know what I seem to the world, but to myself I appear to have been like a boy playing upon the seashore and diverting myself by now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered. - Sir Isaac Newton |
08-23-2008
| | Creating | | Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,537
| | | Re: Your favourite "living fossils"?
lungfish 
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I do not know what I seem to the world, but to myself I appear to have been like a boy playing upon the seashore and diverting myself by now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered. - Sir Isaac Newton |
08-23-2008
| | Creating | | Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,537
| | | Re: Your favourite "living fossils"?
Quote:
Bowfins are an order (Amiiformes) of primitive ray-finned fish. Only one species, the bowfin Amia calva, family Amiidae, exists today, although additional species in six families are known from Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Eocene fossils. These included the huge Leedsichthys, probably the biggest fish that ever existed. The bowfin and the gar are two of the freshwater fishes still extant that existed, almost unchanged from their current form, while the great dinosaurs roamed the earth
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I do not know what I seem to the world, but to myself I appear to have been like a boy playing upon the seashore and diverting myself by now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered. - Sir Isaac Newton |
08-23-2008
|  | Astounding Vision | |  2 Many Bugs Champion! Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: South Eastern North Carolina, Cape Fear Region
Posts: 3,161
| | | Re: Your favourite "living fossils"?
Birds! Birds are dinosaurs! Quote:
Are Birds Really Dinosaurs?
Ask your average paleontologist who is familiar with the phylogeny of vertebrates and they will probably tell you that yes, birds (avians) are dinosaurs. Using proper terminology, birds are avian dinosaurs; other dinosaurs are non-avian dinosaurs, and (strange as it may sound) birds are technically considered reptiles. Overly technical? Just semantics? Perhaps, but still good science. In fact, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of birds being the descendants of a maniraptoran dinosaur, probably something similar (but not identical) to a small dromaeosaur. What is this evidence?
| Dinobuzz: Dinosaur-Bird Relationships
__________________ Michael
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08-23-2008
| | Creating | | Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,537
| | | Re: Your favourite "living fossils"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Moontanman  | Thats the way I see birds.
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I do not know what I seem to the world, but to myself I appear to have been like a boy playing upon the seashore and diverting myself by now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered. - Sir Isaac Newton |
08-23-2008
| | Astounding Vision | | 2 Many Bugs Champion! Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: South Eastern North Carolina, Cape Fear Region
Posts: 3,161
| | | Re: Your favourite "living fossils"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunderbird Thats the way I see birds. | Any one who has been flogged by a rooster should be able to see the relationship quite well, the little bastards would be dangerous if they had teeth
__________________ Michael
Nuclear is the only real option! http://www.nuclearspace.com/Liberty_ship_menupg.aspx
Who died and left you in charge? Captain Bipto!
The early bird might get the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese!
Life is the poetry of the universe.
Love is the poetry of life.
Over heard from a three year old, "Daddy why do my toes get sticky when I eat strawberry jam?"
Never wrestle a troll. You both get dirty and the troll likes it | | |
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