The era of dinosaurs is long gone, and huge lizards can only be found in museums and cinemas. Some representatives of flora and fauna from distant historical times have survived to this day. They are called relics.
Relics
Millions of years ago, our world looked very different. Plants and animals have changed significantly since then. Relics are called representatives of wildlife, who have not lost touch with distant ancestors. They have a number of features that were found in long-extinct plants and animals, and do not look like modern species.
A relic animal or plant can often be called a living fossil. Out of 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 years ago) to the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago), while relics may belong to later periods.
The term itself appeared in 1885, thanks to Oscar Peschel, an anthropologist and geologist from Germany. Relics are sometimes called not only living beings, but also landscapes and minerals. For example, the typical Siberian tundra-steppe landscape is considered to be a relic. It existed back in the days of mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, tours, therefore it is often called mammothprairies.
Classification
Relics are divided into groups, depending on the era in which their species began to exist. They can be tertiary or quaternary. Neogene, or tertiary, are species that have retained their characteristics at least since the Pliocene period. These include Colchis chestnut, holly, blueberry, wintergreen, boxwood.
Separation also occurs according to climatic conditions. There are glacial relics. They have lived on earth since the Ice Age and are found in caves, rocks, and sphagnum bogs. The common viper is a typical glacial relict animal, as are the gadfly and some dragonflies. Plants include dwarf birch, blueberries, and cranberries.
There are other classifications that separate relics in terms of plant formations (formational), as well as in terms of geomorphological conditions in which they lived (edaphic). Research helps to determine how the climate has changed in their habitats, what changes have occurred in soil, water, etc.
Relic animals
Examples of living fossils living in our time can be easily arrived. Most of them are paleoendemic. Their habitat is not too wide and is quite isolated, which allowed them to keep many features unchanged.
Unexplored many parts of our planet suggests that not all prehistoric species are known. For example, the relict animal coelacanth represents a detachment of coelacanths,which has long been thought to be extinct. In 1938, the curator of a museum in South Africa accidentally discovered the fish among the fishermen's catch. It turned out that this is the only species of lobe-finned fish that has survived to this day.
Living fossils are well-known crocodiles. This relic animal lived on the planet as early as 85 million years ago, although their ancestors, crocodilomorphs, appeared about 250 million years ago. Their sizes reached 15 meters in length. Most of the ancient species became extinct before the Cenozoic.
The habitual habitats of crocodiles have hardly changed since antiquity. Therefore, semi-aquatic reptiles did not have to adapt to new conditions and managed to maintain their appearance as it was millions of years ago.
Relic animals: list
The following is an approximate list of modern relics that live in different parts of our Earth.
| Name of species or order | Habitat | Years of appearance |
| Lungfish | Africa, Australia, South America | 419, 2 mln. n. |
| Guatara | New Zealand | 95 mln. n. |
| siltfish | North America | 250 mln. n. |
| Purple Frog | India (Western Ghats) | 134 mln. n. |
| Horsetail | Southeast Asia, Atlantic coast of North America | - |
| Crocodiles | South America, Central America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia | 85 mln. n. |
| Laos rock rat | Southeast Asia, Laos | 44 mln. n. |
| Coelacanth | Indian Ocean | More than 65 million liters. n. |
| Single pass | New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania | 217-160 mln. n. |
| Lingula | Europe, Southeast Asia, North America | 500 mln. n. |
Conclusion
Relics are animals, plants, fungi, landscapes, and even minerals that have not changed or have changed little since the appearance of their species. In the modern world, there are a fairly large number of living fossils that appeared several million years ago.
The conservation of these species was facilitated by stable climatic conditions, as well as isolation. Who knows, maybe their list is much larger than what is known to mankind now.
