English Explanatory Dictionary

living fossil

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. Any species discovered first as a fossil and believed extinct, but which is later found living; an organism that has remained unchanged over geological periods.
  2. Any living species which very closely resembles fossil relatives in most anatomical details.

Pronunciation

/ˈlɪvɪŋ ˈfɒsl̩/ /ˈlɪvɪŋ ˈfɑsl̩/ en-au-living fossil.ogg

Word forms

living fossil living fossils

Etymology

The term was coined by the English biologist, geologist, and naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) in his work On the Origin of Species (1859): see the quotation below.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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