3 Animals That Came Back From the Dead | Lazarus Taxa

the idea of discovering an ancient animal that was thought to be long dead is something that seems like it would only happen in books or films however this is actually a very real phenomenon organisms that have had a long gap in their fossil record and are therefore presumed to be extinct but then turn out to still be alive are given the name and Lazarus taxa the title comes from the story of Lazarus of Bethany in the Bible who Jesus brought back to life after he had been dead for four days so what kind of creatures do we know of that are Lazarus taxon here are three animals that came back from the dead the first animal on this list who have come back from the dead is a small canid from south america the story of the discovery and later rediscovery of the bush dog is a fairly amusing one but first of all what exactly is a bush dog as I mentioned they are cane it's part of the same group of animals as dogs and wolves however it has been said that they look more like mustelids which is the group that includes weasels and badgers Bush dogs have an extensive range that stretches from Panama to South Brazil inhabiting countries such as Paraguay Peru and Ecuador among others although they are quite rare throughout their habitats making them a near threatened species although they live in forested environments these unique creatures are also exceptional swimmers being semi-aquatic and possessing webbed feet suggestive of their diving habits bush dogs are not particularly large reaching between 57 and 75 centimeters in length and about 30 centimeters in height they have quite short legs as well as short ears and snout and a bushy tail they usually hunt together in small packs taking down animals such as a GU tease capybaras and Ria's although capybaras and rears are far bigger than Bush dogs they are able to dispatch them by cooperating with each other as a group there has even been a case of a pack of about six bush dogs taking down a large tapir which goes to show their effectiveness as predators so then how did this strange animal come back from the dead well in the year 1839 a Danish naturalist called Peter Wilhelm lund described the fossilized remains of a Bush dog naming the creature spiros meaning cave wolf the reason for this name was due to where the first fossils were found even though the actual animal does not inhabit caves and so for many years it was thought that this creature was an extinct species that died out long ago however in 1843 the same guy Peter Wilhelm lund describes the living form of the animal but he didn't realize that this was the very same animal he had named the fossils of just four years earlier cooling the living form xtq on this name was used for the bush dog until sometime in the 20th century when it was realized that the fossils and the living animal were the same thing peter wilhelm lund died in 1880 and so he never found out that the two species he had named were the same animal this makes the bush dog a Lazarus taxon spiros was long thought to be a dead species but as it turns out it's still alive effectively meaning that the creature came back from the dead at least taxonomically it did this fish is the most well known of all Asura's taxa famously being called a living fossil after its rediscovery back in 1938 coelacanth a group of fish that are actually quite closely related to us as they are not refinished like the majority of fish species today are instead they elope finned fish which is the same group that us tetrapods evolved form coelacanth sir actually quite large animals being capable of reaching lengths of up to two metres these fish possess a type of scale known as cosmid scales these structures are very thick and tough acting as armor to protect the animals from damage coelacanths also have a lot of fins on their bodies enabling them to be fairly maneuverable when moving through their watery habitats as they can point themselves in any direction with ease coelacanths first evolved about four hundred million years ago and were thought to have survived until near the end of the Cretaceous period going extinct at about the same time that the non-avian dinosaurs died out this is still an impressive amount of time for group to survive for but it was therefore believed that these fish had been extinct for millions of years since they just disappeared from the fossil record after the end of the Cretaceous so you can imagine the excitement in the scientific community when a living coelacanth was caught by a fisherman in 1938 this was completely unexpected an animal that had supposedly been dead for 66 million years was suddenly swimming about off the coast of South Africa in the years since its initial rediscovery coelacanths have been found all around the West Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania Madagascar and in the Comoros and in 1998 it was announced that a second species of coelacanth had been discovered in Indonesia revealing that coelacanths are actually fairly widespread the coelacanth has often been called a living fossil a term that describes an animal alive today that has hardly changed over millions of years since it was already well adapted for what it did back then however this term is a very misleading one especially in the case of the coelacanth living fossil often encourages the perception that a particular taxon has undergone no change in the millions of years that has been around for which is not true living fossils have evolved over time just not very much as they are in a period of evolutionary stasis they still undergo molecular evolution but their overall morphology might not change a lot prehistoric coelacanth actually do look very different than modern taxa but they have remained similar enough to be recognizable over time and so they can still be classified as a living fossil so there's another animal that came back from the dead surprising scientists all over the world with this long absence from the fossil record but after all that time away it turns out that coelacanths have always been here with us the false killer whale is one of the largest dolphins in the world along with the Orca and pilot whale and although its name might suggest some relation the false killer whale is not closely related to the killer whale the two animals do look somewhat similar sharing certain characteristics but they are classified in different dolphin groups this animal is also another example of a Lazarus taxon as it was once believed to be extinct false killer whales can grow to be very big animals reaching lengths of around five meters so you might be wondering how such a large bodied creature was thought to be extinct for so long well as we saw the coelacanth the ocean is good at keeping secrets the false killer whale first came to our knowledge for its fossilized remains bones from the creature were discovered in 1843 in Lincolnshire England and were described in 1846 by the famous naturalist Sir Richard Owen in his book a history of British fossil mammals and birds Owen immediately noticed the resemblance to killer whales as well as the long-finned pilot whale naming this newly discovered animal for clinic residents at this time in history both the killer whale and long-finned pilot whale were also classified under the jeana's for kleiner and so for 15 years of us thought that Owens dolphin was a long extinct species but then remarkably in 1861 a large part of false killer whales were spotted off the coast of Germany and described by Danish zoologist one of the members of the pod has actually captured and the next year a few false killer whales were found beached on the Danish coast providing undeniable evidence of the survival of the species however they might not survive for much longer although there is not enough data to determine their conservation status as a species individual populations such as the Hawaiian population are sadly endangered studies over the last 20 years have illustrated a decline in the number of sightings of this animal as well as the size of the pods that are sighted this decline has most likely been caused by the reduction of their prey the pollution of their habitats from plastics and chemicals as well as these animals being caught as bycatch which causes them to become entangled in fishing nets and drown the threats the false killer whale faces coupled with a very slow rate of reproduction makes them a very vulnerable species despite their name false killer whales are actually very friendly towards humans in the wild with reports of these animals offering their fish to people a lone individual in waters around British Columbia and Washington would repeatedly catch tuna before offering their catch to humans in boats and members of the Hawaiian population have been known to give fish to divers false killer whales are also kept in captivity in some aquariums as you can see from the footage you're seeing now these videos are from my visit to Vancouver Aquarium and although is always sad to see cetaceans in captivity this individual is a rescued false killer whale and likely would have died if it had been left in the wild so there's yet another animal that has risen from the dead the secret of its survival being hidden from us by the ocean once again if there's one thing you've learned from this video I hope it's an understanding of how lucky we are to have been given another chance to see these incredible animals in the flesh after thinking they were dead for so long and since we've been given this chance I really hope we do not waste it by making these creatures extinct anyway finding out that an animal has survived far longer than we expected only for us to kill it off would be a truly tragic ending to such remarkable creatures thank you for watching this video I really hope you enjoyed it and learned something new if you would like to find out more about our world and the wonderful life we share it with please feel 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Channel: Ben G Thomas

Views: 215,952

Rating: 4.8825879 out of 5

Keywords: Biology, Science, Paleontology, Palaeontology, Dinosaurs, Animals, Nature, Wildlife, Ben, Thomas, Prehistory, Anatomy, Fossil, Bones

Id: Dvf5bLjR_KA

Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2018