Horseshoe crabs finally have legal representation. It only took 500 million years or so.

A so-called environmental group has filed a lawsuit in behalf of the ancient chelicerates trying to get them classified as endangered.

After the National Marine Fisheries Service declined to list the species as needing protection, the Center for Biological Diversity has gone to court.

The center is seeking Endangered Species Act protections for the crabs, which live up and down the Atlantic coast.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, challenges National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s finding that federal protections for horseshoe crabs were not warranted, according to WBOC-TV.

“Environmentalists” argue the agency improperly dismissed evidence showing population declines and failed to follow required procedures under the Endangered Species Act.

The lawsuit claims horseshoe-crab populations have experienced significant declines in recent decades due to overharvesting and habitat loss.

Shore birds along the Maine coast, whose diets include the eggs of horseshoe crabs, may be getting away with murder.

While environmentalists blame excessive harvesting and habitat loss, the birds eating the future generations of crabs are getting away with impunity…

Horseshoe crabs were crawling along the shallow sandy bottoms of earth’s oceans 200 million years before the first dinosaurs came on the scene.

The crabs have been described as “living fossils,” having changed little since they first appeared 250 million years ago, and similar-looking fossil remnants extend back to 200 million years before that.