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The ancestors of gars, horseshoe crabs and coelacanths looked almost the same as their modern relatives. Darwin called species like these “living fossils'' because they seem like they are evolutionarily frozen in time. But Darwin was wrong.

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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:

• Stabilomorph: A species that retains a stable form over millions of years.
• Molecular Evolutionary Rate: The frequency with which DNA or protein sequences are fixed in a population.
• Ship of Theseus Paradox: A philosophical thought experiment that asks if an object is still the same if all of its original components are replaced over time.

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CREDITS

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David Goldenberg | Script Writer, Narrator and Director Lizah van der Aart | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation Nathaniel Schroeder | Music

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Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke Arcadi Garcia i Rius • David Goldenberg • Melissa Hayes Alex Reich • Henry Reich • Peter Reich Ever Salazar • Leonardo Souza • Kate Yoshida

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REFERENCES

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Kin, A., & Błażejowski, B. (2014). The horseshoe crab of the genus Limulus: living fossil or stabilomorph?. PloS one, 9(9), e108036. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0108036

Brownstein, C. D., et al. (2024). The genomic signatures of evolutionary stasis. Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 78(5), 821–834. https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpae028

Amemiya, C. T., et al. (2013). The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution. Nature, 496(7445), 311–316. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12027

Casane, D., & Laurenti, P. (2013). Why coelacanths are not 'living fossils': a review of molecular and morphological data. BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, 35(4), 332–338. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201200145

Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, et al. Molecular Biology of the Cell. 4th edition. New York: Garland Science; 2002. How Genomes Evolve. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26836/

Dresow, M. (2023). Re-thinking Living Fossils, Again. ExtinctBlog. Retrieved from: https://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2023/9/2/living-fossils

Romeo, J. (2020). The Horseshoe Crab: Same As It Ever Was? `JSTOR. https://daily.jstor.org/the-horseshoe-crab-same-as-it-ever-was/

Black, R. (2014). Evolution in the slow lane. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/evolution-in-the-slow-lane

Shear, W, Werth, A. (2014). The Evolutionary Truth About Living Fossils. American Scientist. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-evolutionary-truth-about-living-fossils