Coelacanths live for as long as people
And their young have a five-year gestation period
ON DECEMBER 23rd 1938 Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a curator at the East London Museum, in South Africa, dropped by her local fish market. While there, she spotted the most beautiful fish she had ever seen. It was pale mauve, nearly two metres long, and had silvery markings. Though she had no inkling at the time, it turned out to be part of a group called the coelacanths, hitherto believed to have died out with the dinosaurs.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Curiouser and curiouser”
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