15 living fossils that outlasted the dinosaurs

A QZ article profiles 15 species known as 'living fossils'—animals and plants whose body plans have remained essentially unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, predating the dinosaurs and surviving multiple mass extinctions. The term was coined by Charles Darwin. Examples include horseshoe crabs (450 million years), chambered nautiluses (500 million years), coelacanths (400 million years, rediscovered in 1938), tuataras (250 million years), lampreys (360 million years), sturgeons (200 million years), velvet worms (500 million years), goblin sharks (125 million years), frilled sharks, ginkgo trees (200 million years, survived Hiroshima), elephant sharks (420 million years, slowest-evolving vertebrate genome), cockroaches (320-350 million years), sponges (600 million years), sharks (400 million years as a lineage), and brachiopods like Lingula (500 million years). The article explains their evolutionary stability through stabilizing selection and generalized adaptations, and notes modern threats like overfishing and habitat loss.