The genes of an ancient fish, the coelacanth, have much to
reveal about our distant past.
The South African fisherman who pulled a prehistoric-looking
blue creature out of his net in 1938 had unwittingly snagged one of the
zoological finds of the century: a 1.5-metre-long coelacanth, a type of fish
that had been thought to have become extinct 70 million years earlier.
Since then, scientists have identified two species of
coelacanth, one African and one Indonesian. With their fleshy, lobed fins —
complete with bones and joints — and round, paddle-like tails, they look
strikingly similar to the coelacanths that lived during the Cretaceous period,
when dinosaurs still roamed Earth.