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The Ultimate Living Fossil

Author:
Ashleigh Kelly
Role:
Tween News Staff

Meet the gars, the ultimate living fossils! These prehistoric fish have been swimming around since the time of dinosaurs, around 150 million years ago. Imagine that! Scientists say they've changed very, very slowly over all those years.

Gars have big jaws filled with super sharp teeth, making them look like real-life monsters from the past. And guess what? They haven't changed much in all this time, making them some of the slowest evolvers in the animal kingdom.

A group of scientists recently looked into gars and other animals called living fossils. These are creatures that have stayed pretty much the same over a really long time. The scientists used fancy computers to study the genes of these animals and found out how slowly they've been evolving.

Out of all the animals they looked at, gars were the champions of slow evolution. They hardly change at all! This means they haven't made many new species over the years. Instead, the few species they have stayed pretty similar to each other.

What's even more fascinating is that some gars from different times can still have babies together! Can you imagine if humans and wombats could do that? It's like a real-life science fiction story!

So, why are gars so slow at evolving? Scientists think there's something special in their genes that helps keep them the same for so long. It's like they have their own secret recipe for staying ancient. How cool is that?