Scientists thought this ancient fish had been extinct for 66 million years, until it suddenly appeared in a fishing net in South Africa |
For decades, the coelacanth existed in scientific literature as a creature of the distant past. Fossils showed that members of this ancient fish lineage had lived alongside dinosaurs and vanished from the fossil record around 66 million years ago. The assumption seemed straightforward: they were gone.Then, in December 1938, a fishing trawler operating off the…
