Word.ws English Dictionary

living fossils

living fossils is the plural of living fossil.

Meaning of living fossil

Noun

living fossil (plural living fossils)

  1. (evolutionary theory) Any species discovered first as a fossil and believed extinct, but which is later found living; an organism that has remained unchanged over geological periods.
    • The coelacanth and the dawn redwood are living fossils.
  2. (evolutionary theory) Any living species which very closely resembles fossil relatives in most anatomical details.
    • Crocodiles are living fossils that haven’t changed their appearance much in millions of years.

Questions about living fossils

What is living fossils the plural of?
Living fossils is the plural of living fossil.

Words near living fossils in the dictionary

  1. living fences
  2. living floor
  3. living floors
  4. living for
  5. living fossil
  6. living fossils
  7. living from paycheck to paycheck
  8. living hell
  9. living hells
  10. living hinge
  11. living hinges

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: living fossils (page history and authors); living fossil (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “living fossils.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/living_fossils. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.