OH SNAP TIME FOR AN INFODUMP
Coelacanths are a species of fish that live in two places: the West Indian Ocean, especially along South Africa, and Indonesia. And they live deep down in the water, but not deep enough, so trawler fishermen occasionally snag one.
And that’s how we found out they existed, because a fisherman picked one up, and was like “goddamn this is a weird looking fish” and called up his museum curator buddy Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. She was like “omg weird fish, I love it” and started trying to figure out what branch of fish it was from and that…
That’s when it gets funky.
Because, see, these fish, they are OLD. They are OLD AS BALLS.
Not individually (although they could be, there are some debates on that), but evolutionarily. Like, we can trace human ancestors back pretty far, and we know where all our recent ones were and they’re not that old.
A coelacanth? Its last ancestor was over 150 million years ago. As far as the fossil record goes, it has not evolved since then.
When Marjorie looked at the sample her fisherman buddy gave her, she was like “dude. This fish is a FOSSIL. I have only seen fish like this IN ROCKS.”
Coelacanths spend so much time down in dark deep cold water that they just haven’t bothered to evolve. They’re like “we’re good here, this is awesome, hey check it out, a cuttlefish, that’s good eating.”
And that’s why they’re so fucking cool. This ancient-ass fish have just been chilling out for literal millennia, letting the world pass them by, not evolving, just perfectly happy where they are. And now we get to see them and be like “y'all rock.”