The Coelacanth: The Fish That Rose From 66 Million Years of Extinction
On the morning of December 22, 1938, the trawler Nerine came into the harbour at East London, on South Africa's southeast coast, after dragging its nets between the Chalumna and Ncera rivers. Its captain, Hendrik Goosen, telephoned a friend to ask whether she wanted to pick through the catch, as he sometimes did. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, the young curator of the town's small museum, almost did not go; it was three days before Christmas and she had a display to finish. She went anyway. Beneath a heap of sharks and rays, a flash of blue caught her eye.
What she worked free was a heavy, steel-blue fish about a metre and a half long, sheathed in hard scales and balanced on thick, fleshy fins that moved more like limbs than anything she associated with a fish. She had never seen its like, yet it struck her as somehow ancient. She wanted it for the museum, and the story of getting it there has become part of the legend: a reluctant taxi driver, unwilling to let a large and increasingly pungent fish into his cab, was talked into carrying it in the boot.
Sign up and get your first month completely free — unlimited access to the entire archive, ad-free for subscribers. Cancel anytime.
Subscribe — first month free