"Living Fossil" is a science fiction story by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, on the concepts of human extinction and future evolution.

[2] It is perhaps the earliest work of fiction dealing with the afterwards popular theme of humanity being replaced by other intelligent primates in the future, later epitomized by Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes.

Other animals, like bears, lions, deer, geese, ducks, snakes, dragonflies, grasshoppers, fleas and mayflies, continue to survive in their previous ecological roles.

It is a world of depleted resources, much of these having been used up by humans, but the Jmu have developed to a fairly high level their own technology, including aeronautical balloons, rifles, binoculars and cameras.

He then directed his fellow Jmu into the same area, intending they meet their own deaths at the hands of the angered humans, leaving him sole, undisputed claim to the valuable timber.

Nawputta plans to return to South America before the local colonists rediscover and despoil the forest, hoping to have the human habitat set aside as a preserve for these living fossils.

"[4] The plot feature of other primates taking the place of an extinct humanity in the far future is also explored in de Camp's novel Genus Homo (1950), written in collaboration with P. Schuyler Miller.