‘Big Headed’ Mouse
Apparently scientists have just found out that a mouse in Cyprus is a new species and they have called it a ‘living fossil’. Up until now everyone thought that is was a recent addition to mammals having evolved it’s ‘Big Head’ relatively recently but genetic tests have discovered that it’s actually older than the ones mice that it was thought to have evolved from. Does that means that mice have actually been evolving smaller heads? Not necessarily, but it does throw doubt on the idea that we’re actually making progress on identifing all the species on the planet!
Now the other thing about this article on new scientist is that they describe the mouse as a living fossil. Why have they called it that? Just because it’s the only endemic mouse left on cyprus? That doesn’t make it a living fossil, does it? My understanding of living fossil is an animal that hasn’t undergone significant modification at the hands of evolution since it’s split from it’s parent species, or the only reference we have for it is in fossils, such as the Horseshoe crab. Surely this is not the daddy of all mice - a small sub-species on cyprus, and even so we have hundreds of different species of mice to compare it too. Perhaps they just used the word to liven up the article? Who knows? But I don’t think it can be called a living fossil.
Good Hunting