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Which animal has changed the least since the age of the dinosaurs?

By YPB Team

Some of these bodies were already old news when the first dinosaurs hatched; others merely outlived them. Pick the design evolution never bothered to update.

  1. Coelacanth — ranked #11
    Coelacanth
    Lobe-finned deep-sea fish thought extinct for 66 million years until one surfaced in a South African net in 1938.
    1000pts
  2. Horseshoe Crab — ranked #22
    Horseshoe Crab
    Helmet-shaped arthropod that has crawled coastal shallows for more than 400 million years, closer kin to spiders than crabs.
    897pts
  3. Goblin Shark — ranked #33
    Goblin Shark
    Deep-water shark with a blade-like snout and slingshot jaws, last of a family dating to the Cretaceous.
    717pts
  4. Cockroach — ranked #44
    Cockroach
    Flattened scavenger insect whose basic form dates back more than 300 million years.
    717pts
  5. Triops — ranked #55
    Triops
    Three-eyed tadpole shrimp of temporary pools, often called the oldest living animal design on Earth.
    636pts
  6. Velvet Worm — ranked #66
    Velvet Worm
    Soft-bodied, slime-squirting predator that has looked much the same since the Cambrian.
    538pts
  7. Dragonfly — ranked #77
    Dragonfly
    Four-winged aerial hunter whose giant ancestors patrolled Carboniferous swamps long before the first dinosaur.
    538pts
  8. Tuatara — ranked #88
    Tuatara
    New Zealand reptile and sole survivor of an order that flourished alongside the earliest dinosaurs.
    538pts
  9. Sturgeon — ranked #99
    Sturgeon
    Bony-plated river fish with a lineage reaching back some 200 million years, still spawning in the same way.
    418pts
  10. Alligator Gar — ranked #1010
    Alligator Gar
    Toothy, armour-scaled North American fish that looks almost identical to gars from the Cretaceous.
    418pts
  11. Hagfish — ranked #1111
    Hagfish
    Slime-producing, jawless scavenger of the deep sea with fossils 300 million years old that look just like it.
    418pts
  12. Alligator — ranked #1212
    Alligator
    Broad-snouted crocodilian of the American South, built much like relatives that watched the dinosaurs die out.
    0pts
  13. Nautilus — ranked #1313
    Nautilus
    Spiral-shelled cephalopod whose chambered shell design has persisted for roughly 500 million years.
    0pts
  14. Lamprey — ranked #1414
    Lamprey
    Jawless, eel-like fish with a sucker mouth, essentially unchanged for about 360 million years.
    0pts
  15. Frilled Shark — ranked #1515
    Frilled Shark
    Eel-shaped shark with frilly gill slits whose modern form matches fossils around 80 million years old.
    0pts
  16. Crocodile — ranked #1616
    Crocodile
    Armoured river predator whose body plan has barely shifted since crocodilians first appeared in the Triassic.
    0pts
  17. Platypus — ranked #1717
    Platypus
    Egg-laying, duck-billed mammal from a group that split off before the dinosaurs reached their peak.
    0pts

Comments 1

Crocodylians come from a 230-million-year lineage that survived two mass extinctions, and the horseshoe crab still has them on age: https://youpick.best/articles/alligator-vs-crocodile-ranked

YP
ypb-team
2h ago