Tuatara is the fastest evolving animal

WELLINGTON, Australia, March 25 (UPI) -- New Zealand scientists have confirmed the tuatara -- the country's so-called living dinosaur --- is evolving faster than any other animal.

Massey University Professor David Lambert and colleagues at the Allan Wilson Center for Molecular Ecology and Evolution recovered DNA sequences from the bones of ancient tuatara up to 8,000 years old. Although tuatara have remained largely physically unchanged during very long periods of evolution, the researchers found the animals are evolving at a DNA level faster than any other animal.

"What we found is that the tuatara has the highest molecular evolutionary rate than anyone has measured," Lambert said, noting it is significantly faster than for animals, including the cave bear, lion, ox and horse.

"Of course we would have expected that the tuatara, which does everything slowly -- they grow slowly, reproduce slowly and have a very slow metabolism -- would have evolved slowly," said Lambert. "In fact, at the DNA level, they evolve extremely quickly, which supports a hypothesis proposed by the evolutionary biologist Allan Wilson, who suggested that the rate of molecular evolution was uncoupled from the rate of morphological evolution."

The research appears in the journal Trends in Genetics.