Living Fossils Are Dead! Long Live Living Fossils
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- Scientists are looking to end how we categorize living fossils, and in doing so, give the phrase new life.
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Just fyi, your yale source link leads to a 404
Like i live in Sweden so when u uppload a vid i cant be the first person to comment
The Times are different
My 13 year old son assures me that I am in fact a living fossil. I would encourage science to continue to use the term. If we stop using the term living fossil my son will need to find a more creative way to describe my character. I don't think that I'm emotionally ready for that.
Is Neel Nand your son? :P
ua-cam.com/video/XI7_HE3Bkk4/v-deo.html&lc=UgyVcOFW8FtNsqSYmO14AaABAg
@@sapphirII I've never heard of Neel Nanda before. This Dad joke was one of my own.
@@perceivedvelocity9914 I was just joking since they said their dad was living fossil and you said your son calls you that.
To qualify as an ELF in my book, you gotta have:
1. Pointy ears.
2. +2 to DEX.
3. Enjoys camping.
*kidnaps elf*
4. Immune to sleep and charm.
5. Distrust of Dwarves
@@anarchyantz1564 This goes into the book.
6. Can talk to animals
7. Having magic energy
Don't forget : Arrogant hippies.
I feel like a living fossil every time I get out bed.
You feel like live creature made of stone?
@@marvalice3455 no, I move like one.
Lmfao damn I can relate to u my bones and joints be sounding like those noisemakers that u spin around
Watch this comment get 500 likes
Happens to me when I can't get out of bed.
My dad’s a living fossil, I even have to dust him off from time to time.
🥲😂
I feel you, bro
Amazon sells dust covers for furniture, zip him up in one and save yourself the work.
I hope that doesn't mean what I think it means...
@@kettei5408 🤢
The genes the ginko has evolved and gained for dealing with stuff reminds a lot of the creatures from microcosm os who also seem to have gained a solution for everything and anything.
I guess once you've found the perfect body shape, you just make it stronger and more resilient.
it's more impressive for the ginko because they don't reproduce as fast as microorganisms
Why animals keep evolving into crabs too
@@WolfgangDoW return to monke or evolve to crab
like a video game character who's already maxed their good abilities so they just start dumping points into element resistance
that is actually keanu reeves’ motto
6:27 - "for an organism to qualify as an ELF....."
It must work for Santa!
So could you say the term "living fossil" is a living fossil? eh? eh?
🥁
@@golgarisoul 💥
Ah science puns
So basically we need to keep coelacanths alive to get all the Reggies.
Don’t forget the whales
The whaaaaales
If we put these "living fossils" and their actual fossilized ancestors, would the "living fossils" out compete their ancestors in most cases or not usually. How adapted are they?
If we are considering modern conditions, the modern counterpart will probably out compete the older generation due to the newer one having adaptations to the modern conditions. If the conditions were similar, then it really depends.
Since all species evolve to meet the needs of the status quo, they do not need to get "better" overall, only fit more effectively. Because of this the competition results would be decided by the environment they are in. If it is better for modern species, then said modern species will survive but may have to continue fighting older fossils with adaptations for the same environment, & same for other situations
their ancestors aren't necessarily less evolved, just more adapted to conditions then
@@carlosandleon Nope. Evolution happens over time and between generations. Being that ancestral generations are, definitionally, earlier than later generations, they have undergone fewer generations and thus less evolution than their descendants. Ergo, they are inherently less evolved.
The real test is if they could mate with the ancestors
The video mentions that Crocodiles and Horsehoe crabs have still gone through plenty of genetic changes, so calling them living fossils is a misnomer, but if those genetic changes don't actually result in meaningful physiological changes for the organism and how it operates in a given ecological niche, then does having those changes really matter in regards to refuting the concept of a "Living Fossil"? The point would still stand that in comparsion to a lot of other organisms they've mostly stuck to their existing evolutionary adaptions and niches and haven't shifted in those roles much.
it means that scientist categorize an actual living fossil is a dinosaur that goes cryogenic sleep for million of years
As mentioned they've changed to adapt to climate etc, but their external shape is the same. Much as a lot of people these days can digest milk as adults but we still look like shaved monkeys.
The real place to look would be clonal organisms where we are pretty sure some "individual" plants have been around for thousands of years. They have much slower genetic change so if we can find one that's millions of years old we can hope that it's genetically unchanged (but that means asking what exactly an individual is)
I agree fundamentally, but there are changes a creature may have undergone that wouldn't have changed the structure that might be significant enough (individually or in aggregate) that it makes a difference. Like, have alligators always had antibiotic blood, or is that a more recent trait? Has the horseshoe crabs eyes changed to adapt to new ocean compositions and temperatures?
Again, I fundamentally agree. I think the change in "branding" as it were gives us the opportunity to think about adaptations to "mechanical" changes to otherwise thematically stable environments, along with what Hank mentioned about conservation. I also can't help but think of the scientific and engineering breakthroughs we could have by reinvigorating the public's interest.
I think a lot of genetic changes are random drift, often of "silent" genes (if noncoding DNA is still a gene?), but lots of chemical changes can take place without affecting form. In animals, that may just be the immune system and perhaps what the liver and digestive systems do to detoxify and metabolise new foods and environmental hazards. Plants can't run away, so are chemical weapons factories. The phytochemistry of "primitive" angiosperms like the magnoliads strikes me as more interesting than that of most orchids even though orchids were historically seen as the "most advanced" (based largely on sexual organs, as botany does, but also on species diversity though daisies might outdo orchids there and certainly are more successful in terms of numbers of plants or weight of biomass).
Why was I expecting a story on a newly discovered snail species that uses the process of fossilization to help grow and strengthen its shell and be a literal living fossil?
Or a crab species that uses fossilized shells as it's own.
Scientists to sharks: you’ve changed, man
This sounds like a solution to a genetics' version or ship of theseus.
So are you saying that humanity's understanding of the world has been...
Evolving?
😲😲😲😲
👏👏👏👏
Yup
The way I've always seen it, representing life as a tree from which branches emerge means that we ultimately are in need of a way to classify which limbs of the tree have branched less, and Living Fossil is a pretty solid way to represent those organisms. A limb that branches less has found a niche and held it for a long time uninterrupted, making it a Living Fossil by this definition.
I can give up living fossil, but I still can't give up Pluto....
Well that title is certainly an exercise in wordplay.
If they are almost identical to ancient ancestors, I still think living fossil is an apt name even if they are quite different genetically. It's not a scientific term after all?
I've always thought of "living fossils" as a very generalised and colloquial term, so it's, well, interesting that they're putting in the effort to standardise it... Maybe this is why scientists are fun at parties
“Scientists recently discovered that ‘Living Fossils’ are not, in fact, fossilised remains that are alive. This revelation was surprising, and indicates a possibility that horseshoe crabs are not made of horseshoes, and blue-footed boobies are not breasts with blue feet.”
You get it.
This seems like a very nuanced debate, and it'll never ever take off in the general public. Focusing conservation efforts on ancient lineages is common sense though, having living creatures similar to ancient ones is an invaluable tool.
When Japan entered the modern age and had access to meat instead of mostly fish, their height started to increase. They are taller now. Some changes are improvement in diet.
"Invasive species" will likely be need to be redefined now as well.
What about the Wollemi Pine? Thought to be extinct for some 200 million years, found alive about 20 years ago. Every living tree is genetically identical. Can we at least call these living fossils?
So what I'm hearing as the main takeaway from this video is that we should start referring to fantasy elves as "endangered living fossils".
"They're still directly related to ancient organisms." This is such an inane statement. Find me an organism that isn't directly related to ancient organisms, and I'll congratulate you on creating a revolution in the field of Biology.
We are all evolving together. And by all i mean the entire biosphere.
Back up: Ginkgos have evolved resistances to atomic radiation? I am real curious what this protects against and how it works.
I wonder if maybe everything from those ancient time periods were resistant to stuff like that. To survive all the crazy stuff that's happened between then and now. Maybe ginko has had this ability all along. And maybe everything else that has evolved since just missed out on developing that skill. But yeah, it does seem like a highly useful skill to have.
The only living fossil I know of is the nautilus 😄
pronghorn?
Crocodiles, horseshoe crabs, and coelacanths.
@@OtakuUnitedStudio Crocodiles don't count and sci show should be ashamed of themselves The animals that looked like crocodiles 200 million years ago were purely the product of *convergent evolution* Crocodylomorphs rapidly radiated out into diverse ecological niches from terrestrial herbivores to small agile predators of insects and small vertebrates and fully marine adapted pelagic megafauna there is a huge diversity of form and ecology among the clade such that any grouping of croc-like crocodylomorphs will be paraphyletic for excluding the huge diversity of other crocodylomorphs that they lived alongside up until those groups went extinct either in the end cretaceous mas extinction or in the case of the Sebecids, at the end of the Miocene. Basal modern Crocodilians first appear in the fossil record during the Cenomanian stage of the Cretaceous (~95 Ma) and likely diversifying into the modern alligatoroids, gavialoids and crocodyloids before the Campanian stage of the Cretaceous. (~83 Ma)
Now if the late cretaceous is sufficiently old to be a living fossil then a lot of other organisms would qualify as well given that modern crocodilians appeared more recently than birds and many angiosperm groups. Of course since they started to rediversify and colonize terrestrial niches in the Cenozoic (which lived as recently as the early Holocene only disappearing alongside the other Australian megafauna soon after the arrival of H. Sapiens) so I don't think they can count even then.
@@Dragrath1 "Basal modern Crocodilians first appear in the fossil record during the Cenomanian stage of the Cretaceous (~95 Ma)"
Seems old enough to be called living fossils to me, but im not a genetician nor a biologist, so my opinion don't really count lmao
@@bruhman5385 I'm with you on that. Seems old enough to me, too. Heck, when I'm out fossil hunting, if it's turned to stone it's a fossil to me, regardless of what time period it is from. 👍
Thank you sir, I have often winced at that term.
The only living fossil now recognised is Queen Elizabeth
The titles always get me lol
ikr
Abandon Monke;
Progress to *CRAB*!!!
Gingkos might be endangered in their native Japan, but we use them ALOT in landscape architecture here in the midwest and eastern US. All of those defences make them fantastic street trees. Source: I'm a landscape architect
Yes, I wondered about that too! I don't know about Japan, but here in Korea they line almost every street. You really notice them when they start to drop their fruits...
@@strawberryefeu lol yea same here in the states!
@@jrekwq First, they come from China, not Japan. Are there are very few wild populations of Gingko left. Second, in urban areas, the requirement for male trees, to avoid the offensive odor of females, means that only a few clones are planted, further reducing genetic diversity. A city that contains thousands of ginkgo trees may in fact contain thousands of copies of a few individuals.
@@greenupclose7587 ah you're right they do come from China. I always mix them up because theres a story about the first two gingkos in the US having been gifts from Japan.
I feel like he went out of his way to not say "elf".
I know! So disappointed over this missed opportunity:(
Aren't we all living fossils in a way?
The human caused extinction event is super depressing
Isn't the genome a kind of time capsule, that we are just learning how to read?
You know you've visited your local natural history museum a lot when you can identify a display from it. The Deinosuchus hatcheri in the beginning is from the NHMU :)
D•E•A•R
Really scraping the barrel with this vid aren't we SciShow!
Keep it up though, luckily I'm as boring as you lot and I loved it.
My Paleontology course last semester used coelacanth and only a few other fishes as "living fossils" 7:40 mentions these. Great video.
Hey Hank, where did you get that incredible shirt? I kept zoning out into the pattern, losing track of the monologue and having to back up and replay it. I should note that I am easily distracted. None the less, this was a great episode since I've always wondered how you can call a living thing a fossil. Apparently you can't which reassures me that I will not fossilize for a very long time after death despite the evidence of my slowly eroding body.
Wollemi pines in Australia probably come under this heading, being known by 200 million year old fossils until a couple of groves of them were discovered in 1994. Thankfully the groves were saved from the 2020 bushfires.
Those are such cool trees! The San Diego zoo’s safari park is currently working on growing those because the climate is very similar to Australia’s!!
I mean it makes sense since well evolution towards crabs is a thing, so we know they all will be one crabs
Idk why but I really liked this sci show video in particular
Really interesting video, love these cutting edge paleo topics
I like "persistent phenotypes" - not only for alliteration, but it better sums up the situation.
Older taxonomic groups can sometimes be paraphyletic, and paraphyletic groups and in paraphyletic groups some of the members will be more closely related to organisms outside the group than other members inside the group.
My nominee for an ELF would be the Meta sequoia in China (aka Dawn Redwood) which was discovered around 1946 and has a fascinating history as a remnant of of ancient forests that loved in Siberia millions of years ago when the climate was much warmer. I think it deserves a video of its own. It is now a popular tree to plant in many places around the world.
Darwin’s notion of “living fossils,” EPI values, & and the distinction between genetic change and changes in appearance are key. I also really appreciate “Breaking Points,” Krystal & Saagar’s new show:
ua-cam.com/video/YLqg4T4cqNg/v-deo.html
I loved your History series a few years back and used them in my classroom when teaching American and World History! Thanks, Hank!
I think the Tuatara is an endangered living fossil
Hex said "I guess once you've found the perfect body shape, you just make it stronger and more resilient." I guess ginkos, crocs, horseshoe crabs and coelacanths live by the motto: If it works don't mess with it.
"For an organism to qualify for as an ELF, it has to meet three criteria..." Sorry, you missed the fourth - it has to be "unbelievable". (OH!)
Real living fossils would be things like those 45 million year old bacteria spores, recovered from amber and successfully revived after all this time.
I agree with you on that. Their genetic material has not undergone change while in the stasis of amber entombment. However, some genetic damage may have occurred through radiation and slow chemical degradation, et.al.
It's like cars, it might be a Mustang, but what's under the hood is different from 30 years ago.
Excellent video. Ive learned a lot watching this channel over the last few years. Thanks!
Surprised the Tuatara wasn't mentioned.
D•E•A•R
usb c appears to be unchanging, but actually its changing just as much as usb always has, its just that the constraints of the time limit its shape from changing with it
A combination of the 2 processes talked about neat the end would probably be helpful
Personally, I think Cyanobacteria would qualify as a living fossil, even though they already have evolved a lot, they still walk and talk like their direct, distant ancestors that popped up around the end of Hadean era. It's still mind-blowing that they have around for four billion years (and yes, directly responsible for the first ever extinction and ice age, both of which they managed to survive), and for which they are still responsible for the air we breathe now.
Um Scishow you might want to revisit your claim "Crocodilians haven't changed much in 200 million years" the clade that includes modern Crocodilians didn't appear until the **late Cretaceous** 95 Ma with the oldest crocodilian fossil Portugalosuchus only dating to the Cenomanian stage of the Cretaceous and diversifying into the alligatoroids gavialoids and crocodyloids during the Cenomanian (83 Ma) stage of the Cretaceous.
The earlier "crocodile like" animals may have *looked like crocodiles* but they were not closely related at all even the ones that were also crocodylomorphs are now understood to be examples of **convergent evolution** Phylogenetically the crocodile like animals of 200 Ma can't be counted since other advanced crocodylomorphs such as the herbivorous notosuchians were more closely related to modern crocodiles than those supposed ancient crocodiles. Calling them living fossils is particularly ironic when there is a diverse radiation of forms and ecological niches within the group
By this logic we can say burrowing rodents or shrews are living fossils of cynodonts since they look morphologically similar. While there were crocodile like animals in the Triassic Jurassic and early Cretaceous they were not crocodilians and while many of the later ones were at least still distantly related crocodylomorphs (in much the same way marsupials are distantly related to placental mammals) others weren't even that!
Next time you do a video on this topic please have your writers actually do your research instead of rushing together something full of gross inaccuracies.
Next are you going to star calling crabs as living fossils since multiple lineages of crustaceans have convergently evolved to be morphologically similar?
I had to read that title twice..
Reminds me of the video Veritasium did recently on the evolution of bacteria in cell culture labs. Even with an unchanging environment, the bacteria continued evolving ever so slowly. Evolution doesn't appear to be something that even can be stopped.
So creatures that live forever are called ELF's ? Do they have to have pointy ears as well ?
Nice content about fossils. We have started looking for fossils on our channel. Jurassic coast is a great place. Love to visit the states
Id love to see a video on living fossils
Judging by looks alone isn't enough?!
I never knew
Hopefully one day those coelacanths will evolve into coelacans.
If I were an immortal, I'd be an eternally youthful&exhuberant immortal. W/ Wolverine from Xmen_'s regeneration powers.
Then over millions of years I'd be adopted into the families of my distant cousins, over and over again, and be an actual living fossil all on my own some day 😕🙃❤👍🙂
December 2021: The global cost of Ginkgo lumber continues to skyrocket as dads around the world build...
"ELF into a Shelf"
Very informative
62 new jeans? That's one fashionable fish!
the main difference on the Living Fossil version of the Spanish environmentalists and the group of non-Spanish taxonomists relies that one is focused on conservation issues and the other just involves its evolutionary background non matter if they´re endangered or not. One is a very focused view and the other is a broader sense, I like more the one involving the evolutionary reference than the environmental one which only might serve just for conservacy importance issues.
Counterpoint about the genome changes: it could be that the vast majority of that change is benign or has only very small effects. A lineage of organisms maintaining their same shape for millions of years shows that ot is extremely well suited to its environment, and represents the closest thing to an optimal organism for its niche.
Crocodiles for example haven't changed much because there is little to improve on. Could a better large aquatic stealth hunter be made than a crocodile? Maybe. Could it be made _from_ a crocodile? Seems not, or else crocodiles would have changed much more. So the crocodile family has peaked. The current members represent the best that they can do in the current conditions.
My theory about living fossils is that they have no pressure to physically evolve. They've reached such a highly adapted form to deal with their environment, they have no further need to change.
Does the unusual pattern on the speaker's shirt twinkle or glisten when the image is small? Was it picked for that reason on purpose?
I wish I was this animated with my hands when I talk… v attention grabbing indeed 🤌🏽
I’m too high to be reading this title lmaoooo
i had no idea the gingko was in danger 😱 it is so common as an ornamental tree in parks and stuff.. i also lost my mind and bought a tiny one for my balcony 😬😂
D•E•A•R
DNA changes don 't necessarily mean changes in proteins or anything else. They're only important when they affect how the organism fits into its ecological niche. Modern and ancient horseshoe crabs might be functionally similar despite different DNAs.
I had a stronk trying to read this video title
Coelacanth is now Coelacould.
While that last one may or may not be a good descriptor of the proposed category, it definitely sounds useful and worthwhile to give a name.
National geographic : these lizards , unchanged for millions of years..
Lizards : heyyyy.. I m not that old
@@theeconomicninjayoutubecha4416 whatsapp me 911
Gingko may be endangered in the wild, but it is in no danger of extinction. It is overplanted in cities around the world.
legend has it that a new living fossil is the average guy getting home from work on a monday
“Fossils are dead long live fossils” what?
It's coming from the term "the king is dead, long live the king" which simultaneously announce the death of the old king and the accession of a new one. In this case, it's the denouncement of the term "living fossil" while simultaneously showing us some of the possible way to make the term usable again.
@@refindoazhar1507 ohhh cool
this title is a mouthful and I laughed so much at it
Off-topic but if you minimize the video Hank's shirt looks like it is covered in sequins
I viewed living fossils as organisms that admittedly look similar, but also have occupied the same niche for a very long time with limited additional species that have branched off, keeping the same hunting style, behavior, and traits. Dragonfly's as a whole have too many species but crocodiles are more limited. Sharks probably wouldn't fit either except specific species that have lasted a really long time. But that's not my field.
Most sharks for sure don't fit under living fossil, but what about the ones that still have the older gill set? I think it's 5.. 6? whatever, the ones that have an extra on each side, like ice ones.
What have the changes in the horseshoe crabs genetics actually changed about the horseshoe crab...?
please could you add related/sister channels to your channels page? when i can't remember the name of one of the related channels but can remember this one it is very frustrating to not be able to find the link i want anywhere. thanks :)
I find it horrifying that the gingko is threatened
Should change the name to 'Evolving Fossils'
D•E•A•R
GINKGO!!!
I love ❤️ Ginkgoes.
Nice leaves 🍃
And a nice asymmetrical growth pattern that I find aesthetically pleasing. Note: some people don't like it FOR the same reason.
But they are slow growing but live thousands of years so any cutting rooted from them would be genetically YOUNG.
I was unsuccessful. Takes rooting powder and PATIENCE.👍
Finally we can look for ELFs without sounding absolutely crazy. I wonder how many are in Iceland?
Stromatolites, surviving for 3 000 000 000 years: "Pathetic"