Living fossils clues to the past

In December 1938, fishermen off the east coast of South Africa pulled up a strange-looking fish. It was five feet long and pale blue, with an unusually large, lobed tail. The fishermen gave the fish to Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, the curator of a local museum. She had never seen anything like it, so she sent a sketch to Professor J. L. B. Smith, a fish expert. When he saw the drawing, he was astounded. It looked almost exactly like the coelacanth, a fish thought to have died out about sixty-five million years earlier. How could this fish, missing from the fossil record for tens of millions of years, still be swimming in the ocean? Why had it survived when so many other species had become extinct? What could it reveal about life in prehistoric times? The fish appeared to be a "living fossil." Excerpted from Living Fossils: Clues to the Past by Caroline Arnold All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.