‘Endangered living fossils’ (ELFs): Long-term survivors through periods of dramatic climate change

Geography and climate have been the main drivers of evolution in recent geological epochs. While new lineages of species have been formed in the last millions of years (speciation) and others have vanished as a result of historical climate changes (extinction), some ancient lineages appear to have persisted to the present day without net diversification. In this paper, evolution of ancient lineages is addressed by combining phylogenetic and...