Qualla: Latimeria

Latimeria: Introduction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On December 22, 1938, museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was sorting through the catch of a trawler docked at East London, South Africa, when she noticed a steel-blue fish unlike anything in her reference books. It was 1.5 meters long, with fleshy, limb-like fins and an iridescent sheen that seemed almost prehistoric. She was right to be stunned. The fish belonged to a lineage scientists believed had vanished with the dinosaurs, 66 million years earlier. The coelacanth was alive.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Latimeria: Older Than Bones

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cattafra, CC BY-SA 4.0. Coelacanths first appear in the fossil record roughly 400 million years ago, predating the first dinosaurs by more than 150 million years. They once inhabited oceans, rivers, and swamps worldwide, leaving behind fossils on every continent. Then, in rocks younger than the late Cre...

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Image: Cattafra | CC BY-SA 4.0

Latimeria: The Fishermen Always Knew

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A3 Baard, CC BY-SA 4.0. That second specimen arrived on December 21, 1952, pulled from the deep waters off the Comoran island of Anjouan. The fisherman, Ahamadi Abdallah, was puzzled by the fuss. Comorans had been catching these fish for generations, calling them gombessa or mame -- a creature considere...

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Image: A3 Baard | CC BY-SA 4.0

Latimeria: A Body Built for Deep Time

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit This illustration was made by Citron You must credit this : Citron / CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0. Latimeria chalumnae can grow to over two meters and weigh around 90 kilograms. Its brain occupies just 1.5 percent of a braincase otherwise filled with fat. It possesses a vestigial lung packed with lipids, a heart shaped like a straight tube rather than the looped organ of most ...

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Image: This illustration was made by Citron You must credit this : Citron / CC-BY-SA-3.0 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Latimeria: Volcanic Caves of the Comoros

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.5. The islands of Grande Comore and Anjouan provide perhaps the most important habitat for the West Indian Ocean coelacanth. The underwater volcanic slopes, steeply eroded and covered in sand, are riddled with caves and crevices where coelacanths shelter during daylight hours at dep...

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Image: CC BY-SA 2.5

Latimeria: Still Evolving, Still Endangered

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bultro, CC BY-SA 4.0. Despite popular descriptions as a "living fossil," the coelacanth is still evolving. Genome sequencing published in Nature in 2013 confirmed that while its protein-coding regions change more slowly than those of any other known vertebrate -- consistent with its remarkably stable ...

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Image: Bultro | CC BY-SA 4.0