u/Micsinc1114

I'm watching a video about leatherback sea turtles and it showed an evolutionary tree that went back 65 million years and said that they appear to have no changed much in all that time. Which this is certainly not the only species to do that. Horseshoe crabs have supposedly also remained largely the same for millions of years.

I know that evolution doesn't have 'optimal'. Everything is always undergoing evolutionary changes.

But is there a term for a species that seems to be highly-locally optimal such that changes are very small over millions of years.

The answer might be no just because people don't feel fossil records are enough to justify a belief of that description. Just curious, thanks