The coelacanth, which is related to lungfishes and tetrapods, was 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 transitional species between fish and tetrapods. On December 23, 1938, the first Latimeria specimen was found off the east coast of South Africa, off the Chalumna River (now Tyolomnqa). Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer discovered the fish among the catch of a local angler, Captain Hendrick Goosen. A Rhodes University ichthyologist, J.L.B. Smith, confirmed the fish's importance with a famous cable: "MOST IMPORTANT PRESERVE SKELETON AND GILLS = FISH DESCRIBED".
Its discovery 66 million years after it was believed to have gone extinct makes the coelacanth the best-known example of a Lazarus taxon, an evolutionary line 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.[14]
The second extant species, L. menadoensis, was described from Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia in 1999 by Pouyaud et al.[15] based on a specimen discovered by Mark V. Erdmann in 1998 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 Erdmann and his wife Arnaz Mehta before it was bought by a shopper.[citation needed]
The coelacanth has no real commercial value apart from being coveted by museums and private collectors. As a food fish it is almost worthless, as its tissues exude oils that give the flesh a foul flavor.[17] The coelacanth's continued survival may be threatened by commercial deep-sea trawling, in which coelacanths are caught as bycatch.
THROWBACKTHISDAY; makes it 77 years and TBT Blog remembers.
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