Living coelacanth
Celacanto vivo (Latimeria chalumnae)
- Date
- 1938 · confidence high
- Place
- East London, Eastern Cape, South Africa
- Credited to
- Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer and J. L. B. Smith
- People
- 👤 James Leonard Brierley Smith1897–1968👤 Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer1907–2004
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
A fish caught by a trawler turned out to be a coelacanth, a group believed extinct for 66 million years. It was the most famous 'living fossil' of the 20th century.
Courtenay-Latimer, curator of the East London museum, identified it as unusual; Smith described it in 1939.
What it led to
- the study of the transition from fish to tetrapods
- the search for a living population (Comoros, 1952)
- the popularised concept of the living fossil