🦥🇩🇪🌞 Megatherium germanicum heliophilum - the sun-loving giant sloth from Germany.

☘️ In recent posts, I've shown you living fossils - the ginkgo and the magnolias. The term "living fossil" is actually avoided in science because it's very superficial. It essentially refers to morphological characteristics.

🧬 If we look deeper, all living things are simultaneously living fossils and then again not, because our characteristics go beyond our appearance.

🧠 Take my ADHD, a neurological abnormality, for example, and follow current knowledge, then ADHD is partly a living fossil: the genetic component is a relic from hunter-gatherer cultures, or even dates back much further. ADHD is therefore referred to as an evolutionary maladaptation because it has advantages in nomadic cultures but disadvantages in a sedentary lifestyle.

🏚⛺️ However, some futurologists assume that humans will return to a nomadic lifestyle once the resources to maintain our civilization are no longer available.

🪸 We carry characteristics that developed billions of years ago. But we have also evolved, and so we are all interwoven between past, present, and future.

🪱 Each of us, whether earthworm or rocket scientist, is equally wonderful and deserving of a future.

🌞 On the topic of future prospects: This March was the warmest in Europe since records began.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🦕☘️ The ginkgo, like the magnolia, is a living fossil.

The perspective from below upwards is not accidental. It always has something to do with wonder. With searching. With longing. Perhaps even with submission.

It is the gaze of the child, the believer, the questioner. It doesn't ask for control. It asks for meaning.

And when this person pauses, they themselves become part of this old system - not as a ruler, but as a listener. Perhaps this also reflects a silent desire to feel roots again.

It could also be an image of hope.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🌼 🦕 💕 🦖 🌸

Magnolias are among my favorite flowering plants. I suspect that's because as a child I was always so excited when I could admire the flowers from my dinosaur book in real life. Magnolias are sometimes called living fossils because they have been known since the Cretaceous period. I still remember the artist's impression from my book of the Triceratops surrounded by blooming magnolias.

A special feature of magnolias is that they specialize in pollination by beetles. Beetles are evolutionarily older than bees, and magnolias have retained very close to their primal characteristics.

I saw this star magnolia yesterday in Frankfurt. Not far away, a huge tulip magnolia was also in bloom. In Oberursel, the magnolias I saw are not yet in bloom, but are also about to open their blossoms.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🍂✨ When I look at the Ginkgo in its autumn colors, I see a story that reaches back much further than most other plants. Ginkgo biloba is a living fossil, a tree that has endured across millions of years. Yet it is more than a species frozen in time—its subtle adaptations to new environmental conditions remind me that even the oldest lineages of life can transform without losing their origins.

🌳💫🍂🦠🪱🪲☘️

The Ginkgo’s autumnal shedding of leaves is a beautiful example. A tree that sheds its leaves is constantly in dialogue with its surroundings, pausing and conserving energy for the year ahead. Its leaf, delicate and fan-shaped, becomes a bridge between ancient evolution and present-day adaptation. In letting go of each leaf as the season shifts, it seems as if the Ginkgo has long understood that real strength lies in release.

✨️🌌🌍🌦⚡️🌲🔥🐝🧘‍♂️🕯🏔💡💻🌐🛰🌌✨️

This thought brings me to a deep connection with the Ginkgo: its adaptability and survival are not mere relics. They are a testament to balancing past and present, to the art of adapting to conditions while remaining true to one’s core. The Ginkgo shows that evolution doesn’t necessarily mean losing our roots but rather creatively engaging with what was, and what could be.

🌳🍂👣💭 As I contemplate this tree, I feel a reflection of myself in a world that demands constant change. Just as the Ginkgo has learned to thrive across climates and seasons, I too stand within a field of ancient influences and modern forces. The tree reminds me that my own self, with all its primal and contemporary elements, has a place here—one that allows not only survival but the possibility of flourishing.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

The Ginkgo biloba has long been revered as a source of strength and life-prolonging properties. For centuries, the Chinese and Japanese have revered the Ginkgo as sacred because of its vitality and promise of miracles, and asked for their wishes from it.

The Ginkgo is a living fossil, as it has barely changed visibly over many millions of years. It is the only living representative of the Ginkgo genus, which has been documented by fossils for 290 million years. Until a few million years ago, Ginkgo trees were still widespread worldwide, until at some point its natural distribution area was restricted to parts of East Asia.

For centuries it was considered extinct in the wild, but some natural occurrences of this tree species, which can live for over a thousand years, have been discovered again. It is used worldwide as an ornamental plant, but has therefore hardly spread in the wild.

It is exceptionally well protected against diseases and insects. Bacteria and fungi avoid the acidic leaves and bark. They are poisonous to insects. Traditionally, Ginkgo leaves are used as bookmarks to protect books from insect infestation.

Someone who also valued the ginkgo leaf was Frankfurt-born Johann von Goethe, who even dedicated a poem to it. He saw the special leaf growth as a symbol of deep connection. Over time, the leaf splits but always remains connected.

It is a very special plant with a strong symbolic and spiritual meaning that truly does justice to its nature.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

Barramunda / Australian lungfish
(Neoceratodus forsteri) in the Frankfurt Zoological Garden.

There are 6 species of lungfish in the world, of which the Australian is the most primitive. The lungfish morphology has hardly changed in the last 100 million years and therefore, like the closely related coelacanths, are considered living fossils.

Genetic studies, as well as the skull structure, the arrangement and shape of the fins, the approach of separation of oxygen-rich blood from the lungs and oxygen-poor blood from the body, suggest a close relationship to the tetrapods, to which we also belong.

Netherless, the lungfish aren't considered our ancestors, but are closely related to them.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.