The fatest evolving animal in the world is a living fossil

The Tuatara Lizards from New Zealand are limited to two species which are the only surviving members of the Sphenodontidae family that flourished 200 million years ago.

This small lizard might measure up to 80 cm. from head to tail and besides resembling to lizards it’s also equally related to the snakes.

The Tuatara hibernate during winter and are nocturnal, terrestrial reptiles that often enjoy some exposition to Sun light in order to warm up their bodies.

Professor David Lambert and his team from the Allan Wilson Center for Molecular Ecology and Evolution recovered DNA sequences from Tuatara bones that are 8000 years old. From these bones researchers found out that although the Tuatara lizard has remained physically unchanged over very long periods of evolution, it has the fastest changing DNA sequence.

Amazing how this “living dinosaur” still looks the same has ages ago and at the same time shows to have the fastest rate of evolution (DNA level).

Photo: Male Tuatara, wikipedia.

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