Is a fish called the Gar the king of the living fossils?

It's almost like if it ain't rope, don't fix it situation, and they found this model that works, and they've stayed consistent with it for 150 million years plus.

It's Thursday, March 21st.

25 years ago today, Bertrand Picard and Brian Jones became the first to circumnavigate the

earth and a hot air balloon. But today's also Science Friday.

I'm Scifra producer Charles Berquist. There are lots of members of the Living Fossil Club,

Sharks, the Tuatara, the Selecant, and more. But a new analysis of hundreds of genomes finds that the gars may have the

slowest rate of evolution of any jod vertebrate.

Ira Flato talks with two members of that research team about Gar evolution and what it could teach people

about our own health.

Here's Ira.

Joining me now to talk about what they've learned about the Gar so far are my guest Dr. Solomon David,

assistant professor of aquatic ecology, University of Minnesota in

Minneapolis. Welcome back to Science Friday.

Thank you very much, Ira. Happy to be here. And Chase Brownstein, a graduate

student in Yale's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in New Haven, Connecticut, and he is the

lead author on that study I just mentioned

welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much. Thanks again for having me.

You're welcome. Solomon for our listeners who have never seen one. what is a gar, where they found, what do they look like,

where do they live, give us a little summation there because they're kind of weird looking,

aren't they?

They definitely are an oddball fish. When people ask what a

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