Prehistoric | Sealife | Coelacanth

In 1938, a museum curator named Marjorie Courtenay Latimer was looking over the daily catch of a local South African fisherman, when she spotted an unusual fish. A closer examination revealed that it was a coelacanth, a lobe-finned fish that everyone thought had gone extinct in the Late Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago. Astonished by her discovery, she alerted a fish specialist at Rhodes University, James Smith, who confirmed her identification, and then in his excitement cabled to the world ‘Most important preserved skeleton and gills = fish described’. Scientists are often known for their understatements.