Sea Creatures 101: Living Fossils: The Quest For Coelacanth-Part 2

Last month I began telling you the story of Miss Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a dedicated biologist and curator of the East London Museum in South Africa in the 1930's. On a very usual day just before Christmas in 1938, she came across a very unusual find at the local dock. It was a fish believed to be extinct, called a Coelacanth (pronounced see'-la-canth, which means lobe-finned). Her heart leapt at the find, and she had her friend Captain Henrik Goosen wrap it up for her. Miss Marjorie knew the fish was something special, but couldn't really place it. She would know upon further study.

She hailed a cab. She had to get this back to the museum intact! The cabbie was not very cooperative. Of course the fish was a bit ripe at this point, and he didn't want it stinking up his cab. After a bit of arguing, he agreed. She got it to the museum. Now-how could she preserve it? Of course, the most important thing was to keep it cold. If at all possible, she wanted to keep it intact for a necropsy (animal autopsy). The local cold-storage warehouse wouldn't keep it. Even the mortuary in town wouldn't keep it. Now what? The taxidermist! Maybe he would help! At least she would have something to study. The taxidermist did the best he could, preserving the body and its organs.

Miss Marjorie was excited about her find and showed it to the Chairman of the East London Museum's Board of Trustees. He dismissed it as "a common rock cod." Of course, the museum would not be funding any study on this animal. It would all be up to her. It was almost the end of the year. Not wanting to waste any time, Miss Marjorie wrote to her colleague Professor James Leonard Brierley Smith. Professor Smith was a self- taught ichthyologist. She was confident that Professor Smith could identify the fish. When Professor Smith received the letter on January 3, 1939, he was speechless. Miss Marjorie had included a sketch of the fish. It was enough to confirm for him that this was a Coelacanth. One problem-this fish had been extinct for a reported sixty-five million years! To really know if this was Coelacanth, he would have to travel to East London. Commitments kept him from the trip until February. He wanted to stay neutral about the find, so he just wired Miss Marjorie one line, "save viscera...fish interesting." Miss Marjorie had sent him scales from the fish. He'd analyze these and try to get more data. In the scientific community, reputation can be everything. No need to ruin his if this was just an ordinary fish.

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