Discovery
The coelacanths, which are related to
lungfishes and
tetrapods, were believed to have been
extinct since the end of the
Cretaceous period. More closely related to tetrapods than even the
ray-finned fish, coelacanths were considered the "missing link" between the fish and the tetrapods until the first
Latimeria specimen was found off the east coast of South Africa, off the
Chalumna River (now Tyolomnqa) in 1938.
[6] Museum curator
Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer discovered the fish among the catch of a local angler, Captain Hendrick Goosen, on December 23, 1938.
[6] A local chemistry professor,
JLB Smith, confirmed the fish's importance with a famous cable: "MOST IMPORTANT PRESERVE SKELETON AND GILLS = FISH DESCRIBED".
[6]
The discovery of a species still living, when they were believed to have gone extinct 65 million years previously, makes the coelacanth the best-known example of a
Lazarus taxon, a species that seems to have disappeared from the fossil record only to reappear much later. Since 1938,
Latimeria chalumnae have been found in the
Comoros,
Kenya,
Tanzania,
Mozambique,
Madagascar, and in
iSimangaliso Wetland Park,
Kwazulu-Natal in
South Africa.
The second
extant species,
L. menadoensis, was described from
Manado,
North Sulawesi,
Indonesia in 1999 by Pouyaud et al.
[7] based on a specimen discovered by Erdmann in 1998
[8] and deposited at the
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). Only a photograph of the first specimen of this species was made at a local market by Arnaz and
Mark Erdmann before it was bought by a shopper.
The coelacanth has no real commercial value, apart from being coveted by museums and private collectors. As a food fish the coelacanth is almost worthless, as its tissues exude oils that give the flesh a foul flavour.
[9] The continued survivability of the coelacanth may be threatened by commercial deep-sea
trawling.
[10]
