ZANZIBAR (Reuters) – Fishermen in Zanzibar have caught a coelacanth, an ancient fish once thought to have become extinct when it disappeared from fossil records 80 million years ago, an official said on Sunday.
Researcher Nariman Jidawi of Zanzibar’s Institute of Marine Science said the fish was caught off the tropical island’s northern tip.
“The fishermen informed us they had caught this strange fish and we quickly rushed to find it was a coelacanth,” he told Reuters, adding that it weighed 27 kg (60 lb) and was 1.34 meters long.
The coelacanth, known from fossil records dating back more than 360 million years, was believed to have become extinct some 80 million years ago until one was caught off the eastern coast of South Africa in 1938 — a major zoological find.
None has since been caught in South African waters, but around 30 have been caught in recent years off Tanzania, possibly because diminishing shallow-water resources have forced fishermen to cast their nets in the deeper waters where coelacanths live, experts say.
Coelacanths are the only living animals to have a fully functional intercranial joint, a division separating the ear and brain from the nasal organs and eye.
Very cool! And not just because I was in palaeontology, once upon a time! 😉
Really neat, though the evolution diagram on the right needs to be a bit more prominent to draw the ire of creationists.
Jud — just click on the image and it will enlarge enough to draw plenty of ire — 😉
It just won’t draw any ire from Intelligent Design adherents like me. We just marvel at all the clever creatures our Creator has made, and how some of them do evolve to fit their environs over time, and how some of them, like the Coelacanth, do not.