Coelacanths: the fish that 'outdid' the Loch Ness Monster - The Natural History Museum
Coelacanths: the fish that 'outdid' the Loch Ness Monster - The Natural History Museum Coelacanths: the fish that 'outdid' the Loch Ness Monster - The Natural History Museum Posted: 30 Nov 2020 09:07 AM PST The unexpected capture of a living coelacanth in the 1930s was 'the most sensational natural history discovery' of the century. In April 1939, New Zealand's Auckland Star proclaimed that the Loch Ness monster, a sensation that had caught the world's attention not long prior, had been 'outdone'. Making up for the world's disappointment that there wasn't a prehistoric creature living in a Scottish loch was the South African discovery of a strange, steel blue fish with limb-like fins. The fish was a coelacanth, one of a group that was thought to have gone extinct 70 million years earlier. But this one was alive. An unusual fish On 22 December 1938, Marjorie Co