World's oldest creature alive and well in Scotland

NATURAL history experts from across the world will learn this month that the world's oldest creature is still alive and well, and living in Scotland.

It was believed the tadpole shrimp, dating from the Triassic period, had gone the way of the dinosaurs, but it was, literally, just being a stick-in-the-mud in a pond near Dumfries.

The "living fossil", unchanged for 220 million years and the oldest animal species known, will be the main attraction at the Sixth International Crustacean Congress, in Glasgow. About 450 delegates from 60 countries are expected to attend the convention at Glasgow University from 18-22 July.

Dr Douglas Neil, of the university's Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, said: "It'll be the star. It was thought to have been extinct in Scotland for a long time." He added that scientists will be able to examine the creature, an inedible shrimp that measures up to 3cm and gets its name because it looks like a large tadpole.

Scientists could even carry out "paternity tests" to establish where the creature came from and what its relationship is to tadpole shrimps that were in other regions, he said.

The shrimp lived in ponds until it apparently disappeared from Scotland in the 1920s. However, it was "rediscovered" by a scientist searching for Natterjack toads at Caerlaverock, near Dumfries.