First appearing during the Devonian Age of Fishes, the Coelacanth lived in the world's ancient oceans for over 350 million years until the catastrophic K/Pg extinction. It was thought that the fish went the way of the dinosaurs until one showed up in a fisherman's catch off South Africa and fell under the eye of museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. The fish had survived the extinction event, a living fossil that still hunts for prey in the world's oceans.

This specimen is a complete Coelacanth fossil recovered from the Middle Sankamena Formation in Madagascar. The animal belongs to the species Whiteia uyenoteruyai, an early Triassic member of the wider Coelacanth family, and dates around 240,000,000 years old.

Coelacanth was previously featured as a specimen in the Fifth Edition. This item, however, is a complete fossil fish.

The fossil is truly special and an incredible addition to anyone's collection. We're very excited for it to continue to inspire the minds of those fascinated with our planet's history, even 240 million years later.

In the depths of the Devonian sea, a fish hangs vertically in the darkness. Drifting slowly through the water, this otherwise motionless hunter uses an electroreceptive organ to scan the seabed for its next meal. Known to modern science as the Coelacanth, this fish's strange hunting strategy was so successful that it played out across innumerable generations up until the violent K/Pg extinction. It was thought that the fish was wiped out along with much of the life on Earth, until a startling discovery 66 million years later.

In 1938, a museum curator in East London, South Africa was awestruck by the catch of a local fisherman. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer had received a call about a haul of unusual creatures for her to identify. She took a taxi down to the docks and poured through a tub of sharks, fish, and seaweed until she was surprised by a shining blue-finned fish. It was, in Courtenay-Latimer's own words, "the most beautiful fish I had ever seen."

Courtenay-Latimer knew she needed the help of an ichthyologist to confirm her hunch, and reached out to her colleague J.L.B. Smith. Unfortunately, Smith was on Christmas holiday and didn't see her letters until the new year. By then, the Coelacanth’s internal organs had disintegrated, a major blow to identification. However, when Smith saw the sketches, he believed Courtenay-Latimer was right.

Weeks later, Smith personally confirmed its identity as a Coelacanth. For its protection, the fish was transported to his residence in Grahamstown (now Makhanda) under armed escort. That same year, his research was published, and the species was named Latimeria chalumnae, honoring Courtenay-Latimer.

The Coelacanth’s discovery generated much excitement in the public, but it also found controversy. Some scientists suggested Coelacanth’s four pronounced fins were an evolutionary precursor to terrestrial limbs, the link between sea and land life. Evolution was still a controversial idea then, and the Coelacanth became a flashpoint of debate, with Smith and Courtenay-Latimer receiving scores of hateful letters from South Africa’s Calvinist community.

Smith spent years searching for another living Coelacanth, eventually identifying another catch in 1952 on the Comoro Islands off Madagascar. He recounted his long search for another Coelacanth in Old Fourlegs: The Story of the Coelacanth. Courtenay-Latimer continued her work at the East London Museum, which for a time housed the second discovered Coelacanth after Smith’s identification.