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

> 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.

*By YPB Team · Published October 12, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/which-animal-has-changed-the-least-since-the-age-of-the-dinosaurs*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

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

Tags: nature, animals, dinosaurs, reptiles, evolution, prehistoric