A Fish for Our Time: The Mystery of the Coelacanth

Inside the quest to understand whether the coelacanth is an early ancestor to tetrapods:

The Coelacanthus fossils caused a stir in the scientific world, particularly after the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. In the coelacanth’s lobed fins, palaeontologists thought they saw clues to the identity of the “missing link”, the first fish that crawled out of the sea to evolve into amphibians, reptiles, mammals and, eventually, man. They postulated that the lobed fins of the fossil coelacanths suggested that they were the ancestor of the first fish that crawled out of the sea. Others put their money on the lungfish, the first living specimen of which had been discovered in the Amazon in the 1830s by Johann Natterer, a Viennese naturalist.

Published: Nov 1, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,444 words)