Some Obscurish facts
#1450
The coelacanth is a primitive crossopterygian (lobe-finned) fish which first appeared in the fossil record about 360 million years ago. Up until 1938 the coelacanth was thought to have become extinct about eighty million years ago. In 1938 a coelacanth was caught by fishermen on the vessel Nerine trawling off the mouth of the Chalumna River in South Africa. The fish measured about 1.5 m (5 feet) in length and weighed 57 kg (126 lbs). Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a curator at the East London Museum, could not identify the fish. She sent a sketch to J. L. B. Smith at Rhodes University in South Africa who identified the fish as a coelacanth. This modern species was given the scientific name Latimeria chalumnae. The next coelacanth was not caught until 1952. Since then at least 200 Coelacanths have been caught in and around the Comoro Islands. In 1998 a new population was discovered off North Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Indonesian coelacanths appear quite similar to those from Africa except they are brown in color rather than blue and their sides sport gold flecks. The Indonesian coelacanth has been given the scientific name Latimeria menadoensis. Coelacanths comprise one of the two groups of lobe-finned fish. The other group contains the Rhipidistia, all of whose members are assumed to be extinct. Coelacanths probably evolved from the Rhipidistia. The lobe-finned fish are generally thought to be ancestral to all later land-living vertebrates.
The coelacanth is a primitive crossopterygian (lobe-finned) fish which first appeared in the fossil record about 360 million years ago. Up until 1938 the coelacanth was thought to have become extinct about eighty million years ago. In 1938 a coelacanth was caught by fishermen on the vessel Nerine trawling off the mouth of the Chalumna River in South Africa. The fish measured about 1.5 m (5 feet) in length and weighed 57 kg (126 lbs). Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a curator at the East London Museum, could not identify the fish. She sent a sketch to J. L. B. Smith at Rhodes University in South Africa who identified the fish as a coelacanth. This modern species was given the scientific name Latimeria chalumnae. The next coelacanth was not caught until 1952. Since then at least 200 Coelacanths have been caught in and around the Comoro Islands. In 1998 a new population was discovered off North Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Indonesian coelacanths appear quite similar to those from Africa except they are brown in color rather than blue and their sides sport gold flecks. The Indonesian coelacanth has been given the scientific name Latimeria menadoensis. Coelacanths comprise one of the two groups of lobe-finned fish. The other group contains the Rhipidistia, all of whose members are assumed to be extinct. Coelacanths probably evolved from the Rhipidistia. The lobe-finned fish are generally thought to be ancestral to all later land-living vertebrates.