Loch Ness Outdone: Rediscovery of the Coelacanth

[Music] you know i like to talk about forgotten history but of course the history that we tell on this channel it's not truly forgotten because if it was completely forgotten how would i have found it but what if history is somehow lost and then rediscovered as if by magic like in 1938 when a fisherman in south africa caught a fish that was thought to have been extinct for more than 50 million years the discovery shocked and thrilled the world it changed our understanding of species and evolution and it redefined the term forgotten history in his history that deserves to be remembered sean louis rodolf agassi was born in switzerland in 1807 the son of a protestant clergyman educated as a physician he would become one of the greatest natural scientists of his time he was known for careful analysis of data and particularly as a systematist that is as an expert on taxonomy although he made vast contributions to many scientific disciplines one of the most important was in ichthyology specifically the taxonomy of fishes his contribution was derived from his exhaustive work research on fossil fish for the mammoth work published between 1833 and 1843 agassi visited museums throughout europe creating what's been described as a magnificently illustrated work describing hundreds of fossils of fish and creating a taxonomy to classify them in an 1839 volume of the work he described a class of fish based on a fossil of a tail agassi named this fossil coelacanth meaning hollow space referring to the hollow spines in the background in greek sila means hollow and canthus means spine while the original species named by agassi was called celicanthus in 2012 scientific america noted that paleontologists have found dozens of different coelacanth species since then according to the smithsonian institution at one time see the cancer a large group comprising about 90 valid species that were distributed worldwide in both marine and fresh waters see the campus might have grown to more than two feet but other species varied in size from a few inches to over 20 feet shelf life a blog of the us museum of natural history notes that the biggest coelacanths lived 110 million years ago in the cretaceous lakes and rivers of south america and west africa which were then a single continent but the fossil record of the genus has a sudden end scientific american continues see the camp fossils were always in rocks older than 70 million years the lack of celicate fossils in younger strata led scientists to conclude that coelocants had gone extinct a long time ago the smithsonian institution explains the most recent fossil record dates from about 80 million years ago but the earliest record date back as far as approximately 360 million years ago see the camps were thought to have gone extinct approximately 65 million years ago during the great extinction in which the dinosaurs disappeared well agassi gave the first description of the genus and gave it a name initially they received very little attention as a 1990 edition of the general science progress said their existence in past worlds was noted but by and large no great significance was attached to them as they were considered to have gone extinct they were rarely mentioned in scientific literature there were however some things that were particularly special about these fossil fish notably they had what was described as primitive characteristics and they had lobed fins which the smithsonian describes as limb-like fins that are internally supported by bone they belong to a class of fish called sarcopter idgie which includes the lungfish these unique characteristics would draw new attention when in 1859 english naturalist charles darwin published the controversial work on the origin of species the website prehistoricwildlife.com explains the new theory of evolution was controversial because rather than having creatures just appearing upon the landscape by means of a divine creator it stated that animals evolved from one another by a process of natural selection where successful animals adapt and change to meet new challenges the problem though is that there are creatures that live on the land and in terms of evolution they must have a common set of ancestors that once lived in the ocean this means that at some point a creature must develop both the ability and the need to leave the water and climb onto land this gave new importance to the fish that have previously been seen to represent no great significance dr nelson explains as presumably an interim fish swimmer transitioning into a terrestrial walker the coelacanth became popularly known as one of darwin's highly prized missing transitional links biology textbooks throughout the early 20th century widely portrayed agassi's coelacanth as scientific evidence supporting darwin's theory of evolution this description was of some concern to agassi himself who was as many scientists of his time were a creationist a blog post from the university of california museum of paleontology described him as probably the last reputable scientist to reject evolution outright for any length of time after the publication of the origin of species while his opposition to darwin was certainly impacted by his religious beliefs it was also grounded in his vast experience with fossil species the harvard gazette explains exactly's objection was that there was no evidence in the fossil record to support darwin's view that it was a mere assertion he said show me a fossil species that has changed over time thus the coelacanth a fossil fish was seen as evidence both for and against darwin's theory while darwin's view would of course end up holding sway within the scientific community it does leave an interesting bit of historical irony agassi had moved to the united states who i became a professor of zoology and geology at harvard university and founded the museum of comparative zoology in 1863 he was instrumental in lobbying congress to create the national academy of sciences as the journal evolution news and science today notes the irony is more apparent than ever one of the most important scientific organizations in the world was in part founded by a believer in intelligent design there's quite a lot of discussion within the scientific community over agassi's views on evolution and their impact on the legacy of one of the most influential scientists of his era but in terms of the see the camp there was a point this genus of species was being used as evidence of the transition from aquatic creatures to terrestrial creatures from a sea creature to a land creature despite there being no evidence that it ever did anything other than swim and evidence of that would be one of the most dramatic scientific discoveries of the 20th century marjory courtney latimer was born in east london south africa in 1907. even as a child she loved the natural world and had hopes of working in a museum but with few opportunities in that field she studied to be a nurse but before finishing her training she got the opportunity to follow her dream and was hired at the east london museum a self-trained natural is known for her vast naturalistic knowledge of south africa she tirelessly collected specimens of all types for the museum in that role she let the local fishermen know that she was interested in unusual fish on december 22 1938 a fisherman named hendrick goosen found exactly that the website of the nicenet south africa museum explains captain hendrick goosen of the irvine and johnson fishing vessel noreen spotted a huge bright blue fish of a type that he'd never seen before it was still alive but at 150 centimeters long and with a weight of 57.5 kilograms it was far too big to fit into his onboard aquarium there was nothing else to do he left it on the dag where it survived for only a few hours as soon as he docked in east london the captain sent from miss courtney latimer latimer took a taxi to the dock to inspect the fish she would later write i picked away the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish i'd ever seen it was five feet long a pale mavi blue with faint flecks of whitey spots it had an iridescent silver blue green sheen all over it was covered in hard scales and had four limb like fins and a strange little puppy dog tail it was such a beautiful fish more like a big china ornament but i didn't know what it was according to samantha weinberg's 1999 book a fish caught in time the cab diver didn't want to put the stinking fish in his new taxi but she insisted and they put it in the boot weinberg says that latimer realized the resemblance to fish only found in fossils but wrote i thought it couldn't be a fossil fish because it was alive i didn't think it could be but i just knew it was something valuable latimer hoped to preserve the fish until another naturalist could inspect it but the process was not easy with 127 pound fish she tried both the local mortuary and the local food cold storage facility and both refused eventually she went to a local amateur taxidermist named robert center and they preserved the fish as best they could in the end though they were only able to save the skin and backbone there was no skeleton she wrote but they couldn't save the soft tissue which began to putrefy she tried to contact a friend a self-trained ichthyologist named jlb smith but was not able to get a hold of him immediately she wrote to him on december 23rd dear dr smith i had the most queer looking specimen brought to notice yesterday the captain of the trawler told me about it so i immediately set off to see the specimen which i removed to our taxidermist as soon as i could i however have drawn a very rough sketch and in hopes that you may be able to assist me in classing it it turns out that smith had been out of town and didn't receive her letter until january 3rd when he responded from your drawing and description the fish resembles forms which have been extinct for many a long year but i am anxious to see it before committing myself like latimer smith doubted his intuition on the subject he later wrote 50 million years it was preposterous that coelacanth had been alive all that time unknown to modern man on january 9th he wrote to latimer dear miss latimer your fish is occasionally much worried in sleepless nights the two corresponded several more times including latimer sending smith some scales which further confirmed his suspicions but he didn't make a certain determination until he finally made it back to east london in mid-february there he wrote although i had come prepared that first sight hit me like a white hot blast and made me feel shaky and queer my body tingled i stood as if stricken to stone yes there was not a shadow of a doubt scale by scale bone by bone finned by finn it was a true coelacanth he named the new species after latimer vladimiria columnae the discovery of a fish thought to have been extinct for more than 15 million years was worldwide news when the taxidermied fish went on display in february the east london daily dispatch wrote that the largest crowd ever received in one day at least london museum yesterday passed through the doors in order to view the now famous prehistoric fish the paper wrote since the fish was described by the daily dispatch on monday cables from all parts of the world including london germany and the rhodesias have been pouring into the museum on april 18th the herald news of passaic new jersey wrote smith pronounced it sensational and forwarded photographs to the british museum in london flabbergasted officials formally declared that the discovery was one of the most amazing events in the realm of natural history in the 20th century in april the auckland star of auckland new zealand ran the headline loch ness outdone referencing claims that a prehistoric monster had been photographed in loch ness scotland years before where the monster did not materialize the star proclaimed the disappointment of loch ness has now been offset by the triumph of south africa in producing a living example of a group of fishes that was considered to become extinct 50 million years ago echoing the british museum the stark concluded the find may truly be said to be the most sensational natural history discovery of this century still smith was disappointed that the fish's soft tissue had not been saved as much was still not known about the fish he and latimer distributed flyers across the east african coast offering a reward for another specimen the quest was delayed by the second world war but another fish was finally recovered in 1952 by a fisherman off the comoro islands again raising worldwide attention shelflife wrote during a national radio broadcast he recounted opening the crate and weeping as he saw the big fish before him and broke into tears anew again the ceiling camp made headlines around the world and letters poured in from well-wishers one ichthyologist wrote to smith from the united states now i can die happy where i've lived to see the great american public excited about fish since the 1952 specimen many more have been recovered and populations have been found in the wild identifying now two different species the west indian ocean coelacanth in the indonesian celecanth the live fish provided a new insight into the old debate between darwin and agassi the see the kant is a deep sea fish its lobe fins which natural geographic says move in an alternating pattern like a trotting horse are not used to walk and some suspect may be used for moving heavy seaweed in 2013 the coelacanth's dna was sequenced and scientists concluded that see the kants and lungfish had already diverged from a common ancestor before the lungfish made the transition to land thus the smithsonian concludes coelocants might best be described as occupying a side branch in the basal portion of the vertebrate lineage closely related to but distinct from the ancestor of four-legged vertebrates the coelacanth that turns out is not so much a missing link is an interesting bit of extra chain while the coelacanth is often described as a living fossil a 2012 edition of scientific americans says that that is an inappropriate description as the coelacanth has continued to evolve including evolving into the two modern species that we know today scientists best guess is that their last common ancestor was around 200 000 years ago and a study published just this last february by the university of toronto determined that the coelacanth added some 62 new genes to encounters with other species around 10 million years ago one of the study's authors concluded the coelacanth might have evolved a bit more slowly but it is certainly not a fossil rather the see the camp is a classic example of a lazarus taxon meaning a taxon group that disappears for one or more periods from the fossil record only to reappear again later the reasoning is not certain but the most common theory is that the see the kant in the fossil record lived in swamps and freshwater lakes where fossilization is relatively common when those wetlands disappeared those species went extinct whereas the coelacanth species that survived were like today deep water fish where fossils were less likely to occur and the coelacanth had an interesting cultural impact as the creature from the iconic 1954 horror film creature from the black lagoon was according to the son of the screenwriter inspired by the discovery of the coelacanth both as a creature from prehistory driving into modern times and is a missing link between man and fish but the discovery of the fish that as smith noted survived 50 million years unknown to modern man led to one distressingly predictable outcome and that is it nearly caused the coelacanth's extinction the fish was nearly hunted to extinction as black market prices rose to as high as two thousand dollars an ounce driven by aquariums seeking live specimens and practitioners of chinese medicine who theorized that the fluid from the spine of the fish that lived in the time of the dinosaurs could provide immortality as samantha weinberger quoted latimer in her 1999 book perhaps it's time that we leave the coelacanth in peace i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section i will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on facebook instagram twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 102,327

Rating: 4.9666457 out of 5

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, coelacanth, cyptozoology, evolution

Id: nscc9AG_RQg

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021