'Living fossils': we mapped half a billion years of horseshoe crabs to save them from blood harvests
- Written by Russell Dean Christopher Bicknell, Post-doctoral researcher in Palaeobiology , University of New England
ShutterstockIf you ventured to the New York seaside in summer, you might see a large dome-shaped animal with a spiky tail, slowly moving towards the water. These are horseshoe crabs – the animals time forgot.
Fossil records for horseshoe crabs extend back about 480 million years. This is well over 200 million years before the dinosaurs....