A Living Fossil's Shocking Return: Coelacanth Rewrites Extinction Story
In 1938 a self-taught East London museum curator found a coelacanth, long believed extinct, prompting J.L.B. Smith to spend 14 years proving its survival; the living fish, a Lazarus taxon, challenged assumptions about extinction and revealed a lineage spanning hundreds of millions of years, with subsequent finds expanding its known range and confirming its rarity and vulnerability into modern times.