Who is a relic animal?

уже давно минула, и огромных ящеров можно встретить только в музее и кино. The era of dinosaurs has long ago passed, and huge pangolin can only be found in the museum and cinema. Some representatives of flora and fauna from distant historical times survived to this day. They are called relics.

Relics

Millions of years ago our world looked completely different. Plants and animals have changed significantly since then. Relics are called representatives of wildlife, which are not too lost contact with distant ancestors. They have a number of signs that were found in long-extinct plants and animals, and do not look like modern species.

A relict animal or plant can often be called a living fossil. By their ignorance they are often associated with the period of the existence of dinosaurs. However, the era of dinosaurs lasted from the Triassic period (225 million liters) to the Cretaceous (65 million liters), while relics can be related to later periods.

The term itself appeared in 1885, thanks to Oskar Peshel - anthropologist and geologist from Germany. Relicas are sometimes called not only living beings, but also landscapes, minerals. For example, a typical tundra-steppe landscape for Siberia is considered relict. It existed at the time of mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, tours, therefore it is often called mammoth prairies.

Classification

Relicts are divided into groups, depending on the era in which their appearance began. They can be Tertiary and Quaternary. Neogene, or tertiary - these are species that have retained their characteristics even from the Pliocene period. This includes Kolkhid chestnut, holly holly, blueberry, wintergreen, boxwood.

The division also takes place according to climatic conditions. There are glacial relicts. They lived on earth since the glacial epoch and are found in caves, rocks, sphagnum bogs. An ordinary viper is a typical glacial relict animal, like a deerfly, some dragonflies. Among the plants can be identified dwarf birch, blueberry, cranberries.

There are other classifications that separate relics relative to plant formations (formational), as well as the geomorphological conditions in which they lived (edaphic). Studies help determine how the climate has changed in their habitats, what changes have taken place in soil, water, etc.

Relict animals

Examples of living fossils living in our time, you can priesti easily. Most of them are paleoendemic. The range of their habitat is not too wide and sufficiently isolated, which allowed them to keep many features unchanged.

The lack of knowledge of many parts of our planet gives reason to assume that not all prehistoric species are known. For example, the reptilian animal of the coelacanth represents a detachment of Celacanth, which has long been considered extinct. In 1938, a fish accidentally found curator of the museum in South Africa among fishermen's catch. It turned out that this is the only species of brush blood that has survived to this day.

All known crocodiles are living fossils. This relict animal inhabited the planet 85 million years ago, although their ancestors crocodilomorphs appeared about 250 million years ago. Their dimensions reached up to 15 meters in length. Most of the ancient species became extinct before the Cenozoic.

The habitual habitats of crocodiles practically have not changed since antiquity. Therefore, the semi-aquatic reptiles did not have to adapt to the new conditions and managed to keep their species as it was millions of years ago.

Relict animals: list

Below is an approximate list of modern relics inhabiting different parts of our Earth.

Conclusion

Relics are animals, plants, mushrooms, landscapes and even minerals that have not changed or changed to a small extent since the appearance of their species. In the modern world there is a fairly large number of living fossils that appeared several million years ago.

Conservation of these species was facilitated by stable climatic conditions, as well as by isolation. Who knows, maybe their list is much larger than that which is known to mankind now.