New Pacific eel is a 'living fossil', scientists say

A newly discovered eel that inhabits an undersea cave in the Pacific Ocean has been dubbed a "living fossil" because of its primitive features.

It is so distinct, scientists created a new taxonomic family to describe its relationship to other eels.

The scientific team say the eel's features suggest it has a long and independent evolutionary history stretching back 200 million years.

The animal used as the basis for the new study was an 18cm-long female, collected by one of the researchers during a dive at a 35m-deep cave in the Republic of Palau.

In order to classify the new animal, the researchers had to create a new family, genus and species, bestowing on the animal the latin name Protoanguilla palau.

The team's results suggest this new family has been evolving independently for the last 200 million years, placing their origins in the early Mesozoic era, when dinosaurs were beginning their domination of the planet.

The researchers say the Protoanguilla lineage must have once been more widely distributed, because the undersea ridge where its cave home is located is between 60 and 70 million years old.

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