Items12The creator’s order
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West Indian Ocean CoelacanthA coelacanth’s paired fins extend from fleshy bases, a feature shared with fossil lobe-finned fish. The group is known from fossils hundreds of millions of years old. A living fish caught off South Africa in 1938 showed that one branch survived, and scientists later described a different living…0 - 2
Atlantic horseshoe crabThe domed shield, movable rear section, and long tail spine give this animal an outline recognizable in some of its fossil relatives. Maryland’s fossil timeline also shows early relatives with quite different shapes. The Atlantic species is one of four living horseshoe crabs.0 - 3
TuataraA tuatara looks a little like a lizard. Its order, the rhynchocephalians, includes many fossil species from the dinosaur era and only the tuatara survives today. Follow the row of spines along its back and compare its outline with a lizard. Close resemblance can hide a different branch of the…0 - 4
Chambered nautilusThe animal lives in the newest and largest chamber of its coiled shell. Earlier chambers help regulate its buoyancy. Fossils preserve the walls between chambers and traces of the tube that connects them, features that reveal how a similar sort of shell worked in ancient cephalopods.0 - 5
Frilled sharkThis deepwater shark has an eel-shaped body, rows of narrow teeth, and six pairs of gill openings. Frilled shark relatives turn up in the fossil record mainly as teeth. Those remains let paleontologists compare the teeth of extinct sharks with living ones even when soft parts and cartilage are…0 - 6
Australian lungfishLook at the broad fins and the fish’s thick scales. The Australian lungfish has gills and can also breathe air with a single lung. Fossils trace the wider lungfish lineage back to the Devonian, giving you a window into an era when lobe-finned fishes had far more branches than they do today.0 - 7
Peripatoides novaezealandiaeThis New Zealand velvet worm walks on rows of short, soft legs. Cambrian fossils preserve legged animals that help explain the deep history of its wider group. Living velvet worms are diverse, and the fossil resemblance is easiest to see in the way the legs are arranged along the body.0 - 8
Triops cancriformisThe broad shield, many limbs, and paired tail filaments give this tadpole shrimp a recognizable silhouette. A fossil that looks similar can be difficult to assign to a living species. Scientists have reconsidered the identity of Triassic specimens once assigned to this one, a good example of what…0 - 9
American paddlefishThe long, flattened snout is the first feature to look for. The wider paddlefish family has a fossil record stretching back into the Cretaceous, and some fossil relatives also had paddle-shaped snouts. The American paddlefish is the family’s sole surviving species.0 - 10
Alligator garThe interlocking, diamond-shaped scales give a gar much of its familiar armor. Hard scales also survive in fossils, where they help identify members of the lineage long after the rest of the fish is gone. The alligator gar also shows the long jaws typical of the group.0