concept

Living fossil

A common label for a living lineage whose form has barely changed over a very long span — ginkgo, the Wollemi pine, cycads, horsetails. The phrase misleads more than it clarifies, because **morphological stasis is not genetic stasis**. Ginkgo accumulates mutations at an ordinary rate; its genome is not frozen. The outward stillness is maintained by stabilising selection, by disturbance-tolerant life histories and by developmental canalisation — not by evolution stopping. A biosphere can look still. It cannot be still.