Ancient Survivors

Horseshoe crabs, velvet worms – snails, clams, lizards and more. We’ll explore the world’s oldest creatures. Survivors. Untouched by time.

Life forms come and go on this planet. An amazing few have stuck around. Through meteorite strike, that wiped out the dinosaurs, and great extinction that killed almost everything. Through ice age and poisoned seas. The horseshoe crab has hung in there. The lungfish. The velvet worm. The gingko tree.

An amazing few are supreme survivors. Mastodon, gone. Musk ox, still here. Platypus, still here. The greatest survivors have lasted billions of years. Humans? Not so much.

This hour, On Point: Lessons on evolution, life and time from the planet’s great survivors.
-Tom Ashbrook

Richard Fortey, a senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. He's the author of the new book Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind.

You can find a transcript here.

The New York Times "Fortey’s dozen or so subjects have survived the many cataclysms the planet has thrown at them over the past 450 million years."

“I am a Paleontologist” by They Might Be Giants

“Survivor”  by Destiny’s Child