This is what is sometimes referred to as a living fossil, that’s because the organism has been around for some 390 million years. But our planet is changing and experts now say it could soon face extinction.
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00:00This is what is sometimes referred to as a living fossil.
00:08That's because the organism has been around for some 390 million years.
00:12But our planet is changing, and experts now say it could soon face extinction.
00:17The species is called Takakia, and it's a type of moss.
00:20The moss is found only in some of the most remote areas of the U.S., Japan, and in the Himalayas.
00:26And it's one of the quickest species to adapt to environmental changes.
00:29In fact, it's been around since before the Himalayas even existed,
00:32which biologists say it was forced to quickly adapt as the mountains literally grew out of nowhere.
00:37But because climate change is altering our world more quickly than that,
00:40even this fast-evolving plant can't keep up.
00:43Despite being extremely active on a genetic level and being the genome with the highest number of fast-evolving genes,
00:48scientists say they expect Takakia to be extinct in just the next 100 years.
00:52A hard truth to swallow, considering this species predates the dinosaurs by 160 million years.
00:58Which is why biologists have now begun to collect and transplant it to other areas,
01:03hoping it will adapt elsewhere and continue its long-lived existence.