Back from the Dead?
'Resurrections' of long-missing species lead to revelations
By Sid Perkins
In December 1938, Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, curator of a natural history museum in East London, South Africa, went to the docks to look for interesting specimens among the day’s catch. What she found one day she later described as “the most beautiful fish I had ever seen … a pale mauve blue with iridescent silver markings.” The discovery sent scientists into a frenzy.
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The 54-kilogram creature was a lobe-finned fish called a coelacanth. Researchers dubbed it a “living fossil” because the remains of creatures like it had been found only in rocks more than 75 million years old. It seemed that all such fish had died out about 10 million years before the dinosaurs did, yet here was a fresh specimen. And before the century was out, scientists had identified a second living species of coelacanth and had caught or observed the fish in waters from South Africa to Indonesia (SN: 5/5/01, p. 282).