Posted on 09/16/2024 6:08:42 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Today, the coelacanth is a fascinating deep-sea fish that lives off the coasts of eastern Africa and Indonesia and can reach up to 2m in length. They are "lobe-finned" fish, which means they have robust bones in their fins not too dissimilar to the bones in our own arms, and are thus considered to be more closely related to lungfish and tetrapods (the back-boned animals with arms and legs such as frogs, emus, and mice) than most other fishes.
Over the past 410 million years, more than more than 175 species of coelacanths have been discovered across the globe. During the Mesozoic Era, the age of dinosaurs, and coelacanths diversified significantly, with some species developing unusual body shapes. However, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, around 66 million years ago, they mysteriously disappeared from the fossil record.
The end-Cretaceous extinction, sparked by the impact from a massive asteroid, wiped out approximately 75% of all life on Earth, including all of the non-avian (bird-like) dinosaurs. Thus, it was presumed that the coelacanth fishes had been swept up as a casualty of the same mass extinction event.
But in 1938, people fishing off South Africa pulled up a large mysterious-looking fish from the ocean depths, with the 'lazarus' fish going on to gain cult status in the world of biological evolution.
(Excerpt) Read more at scitechdaily.com ...
Smells like fish, tastes like chicken.
A fascinating fish. A junk fish as far as being a food source goes.
I SAW a coelecanth. It was at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. I had taken my biology class to the museum with a custom-made scavenger hunt to find the exhibits and fill out the questions, when a museum administrator asked me if I’d like to see a coelacanth. I knew what they were, and was excited to say “Yes”. It was a large grey fish, now swimming in preservative instead of the ocean. Very cool to see it.
Wow! 😀
“Over the past 410 million years, more than more than 175 species of coelacanths have been discovered across the globe.”
This article, like so many others I have seen lately, is badly written. Is the author suggesting that people were around in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, to observe the first coelacanths?
How many of that 175 were discovered in the first 409 million years? I betting zero....
“Shake up,” sure. Human footprints next to dino fossils have already completely demolished these “theories.”
I’ve always wondered since the Coelacanth survived, why couldn’t other species.
I thought it was about Helen Thomas, but then remembered she's been extinct for a while now.
I bought and read the book: "A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth" by Samantha Weinberg. The natives allegedly did eat it when they found it in their nets, but it wasn't that good...very greasy. After the Coelacanth was discovered alive, word spread that money was being offered to people who found them, so that ended their place on the menu.
According to a Coelacanth website: "They don't taste good. People, and most likely other fish-eating animals, don't eat coelacanths because their flesh has high amounts of oil, urea, wax esters, and other compounds that give them a foul flavor and can cause sickness. They're also slimy; not only do their scales ooze mucus, but their bodies exude large quantities of oil."
They have never been able to keep one alive for long after being brought up in a net, and kept for study.
Woohoo! Start drilling for those babies!
;^)
There are no such human footprints next to dino fossils.
Technically it has been over the past 410 million years, since 1938 is well within that time. /rimshot
I meant dino footprints. Those exist because I have seen it. It is an Acrocanthosaurus footprint.
There are no human footprints next to dino footprints.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrocanthosaurus#Paleoecology
Those student book programs were great!
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