Even More Of The World’s Most Incredible Living Fossils

Credit: Bellaremy Photography

Horseshoe Crabs

Also known as the King Crab, the Horseshoe Crab is not actually a crab at all, as it’s much more closely related to spiders and mites. Horseshoe Crab-type creatures started showing up around 400 million years ago and around 170 million years later, the species evolved to what we still see today.

Chevrotain

Credit: Biolib

34 million years ago the Chevrotain’s home was fairly widespread, but now it’s found only in Southeast Asia and Central-West Africa. Although it looks like a tiny deer (the Asian variety is known informally as the Mouse Deer), its ancestry is not so clear cut. It does share the usual deer trait of having a many-chambered gut to digest vegetation, but differs in that its third stomach is much less developed. It also has four toes like a pig and elongated canine tusks.

Okapi

Credit: Deviantart

Found in the dense forests of Central Africa, this oddly dressed relative of the giraffe was a stranger to Western science until 1901. Because of its elusive nature, it was for a time called the African Unicorn.