“That’s given them a competitive edge in some of those habitats.” “They can survive even in water that’s really hot and low in oxygen, which would drive out other species,” David said. Hidden within their archaic bodies is a suite of adaptations that have carried them down the millennia: spiral guts that wring the maximum nutrition out of kills, a surprising comfort with brackish water, and - most usefully - the ability to gulp fresh air. While no species ever stops evolving, the gar we have today still look much like those of that distant epoch. The mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic Era and the climatic roller coaster that followed dented their fortunes, but did not destroy them.

According to Solomon David, an ichthyologist at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, the gar family originated 157 million years ago in the Late Jurassic period and spread to every continent save Australia and Antarctica.

Millions of years before the arrival of modern mammals or birds, gar patrolled the swampy rivers of America.

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