- SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- An ugly fish known as the "living fossil"
has made another appearance in the ocean, surprising scientists.
-
- A coelacanth has been found in Indonesia
-- 7,000 miles (11,200 kilometers) from its only previously known location
near Madagascar.
-
- The ancestors of the coelacanth (pronounced
SEE-la-kanth) date back 400 million years. Until 1938, scientists knew
the coelacanth only as a fossilized relic from the dinosaur era.
-
- "So, in 1938, it was almost a shock
when one showed up, that you get this, what's called a living fossil basically,
this fish that's known only from the fossil record and here it is, some
80 million years later, you get a live one," said Douglas Long of
the California Academy of Science.
-
- The second coelacanth known is exhibited
in 1952
-
- A fisherman pulled the first-known modern
coelacanth from the waters near the Comoros Islands near Madagascar. South
African biologist Marjorie Courtenay Latimer came across it in a fish market.
-
- History repeated itself in the latest
discovery. University of California-Berkeley biologist Mark Erdmann was
in Indonesia on his honeymoon when he visited a fish market in Manada,
Sulawesi, to look for manta shrimp, the animal he studies.
-
- "His wife pointed out a large, ugly
fish going by on a hand cart, which he looked at and immediately recognized
as a coelacanth," said Roy Caldwell, a biologist at UC-Berkeley.
-
-
- The fleshy fins of the coelacanth earned
it the nickname of 'fourlegs'
-
-
- Caldwell said the coelacanths recently
found in Indonesia apparently live in the same type of environment as those
found in the Comoros, caves about 600 feet (18 meters) deep along the steep
sides of underwater volcanoes.
-
- One reason for the coelacanth's ancient
popularity was its fleshy fins that reminded people of human limbs, Caldwell
said. Those fins led to speculation that the fish were direct ancestors
of land vertebrates.
-
- The fish did not turn out to be the ancestor
of humans, but did manage to outlive the dinosaurs.
|
