20 August 2025
Fishing is well-liked within the Monongahela River at Duck Hole the place fishermen sometimes catch sauger, smallmouth bass and channel catfish. Each every now and then one thing fairly uncommon takes the bait. That’s what occurred in July 2015 when this fisherman hooked a longnose gar (Lepisosteus osseus), a prehistoric fish that hasn’t modified in 100 million years.
Although gar are uncommon the PA Fish and Boat Fee has discovered them throughout fish surveys within the tailwaters of Braddock Locks and Dam. (Duck Hole is under the dam.)
While you catch a longnose gar it’s unmistakable. They’ve torpedo-shaped our bodies with very lengthy, needle-like toothy snouts.
Native to japanese North America in contemporary, brackish or sluggish water, gar hunt at night time for small fish, crustaceans, bugs and smaller gar (sure they’re cannibals).
They’re lengthy lived for a fish, reaching sexual maturity at 6 years outdated and dwelling 15-20 years. They’ll breathe each air and water(!) to allow them to reside in low-oxygen environments.
However are they honestly dwelling fossils? Sure!
A DNA evolutionary research printed in 2024 signifies that gar are the least developed creature on earth. On the molecular degree they haven’t modified in 100 million years. The research discovered that:
- Gars have the slowest fee of molecular evolution of all jawed vertebrates.
- Their DNA in all probability doesn’t change as a result of they’ve “very good DNA restore equipment.” Their “equipment” fixes errors.
The researchers examined this principle by inspecting gar in rivers all through Oklahoma and Texas.
Scientists discovered that two gar genera in Texas and Oklahoma — Atractosteus and Lepisosteus — are crossing to supply fertile, hybrid younger. These teams final shared a standard ancestor roughly 105 million years in the past, making their break up the oldest amongst eukaryotes that may produce viable offspring. The gars beat the earlier file holders—two species of fern — by about 60 million years.
— Science Journal: These gars are the last word ‘dwelling fossils’
To place this in perspective, placental mammals (like us) generate 0.02 mutations per million years. Gars averaged solely 0.00009 mutations per million years at every take a look at web site.
What good is that this analysis? It’d assist people higher perceive our personal DNA restore pathways which might result in most cancers once they fail.
(a lot of this text was paraphrased from Wikipedia, longnose gar)
