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The Coelacanth

Descended from the terestrial vertebrate fishes, the coelacanths are by far the most ancient vertebras known today.

These prehistoric fishes are true living fossils and would be 400 million years old. They have long been thought to have been extinct
along with the dinosaurs, but in 1938, it appeared that they had survived. Indeed, there still exist in the Comoros Islands
a few living ones with almost the characteristics of their Devonian ancestors.

Other coelacanth species have been discovered in Indonesia in 1998, in the Sulawezi archipelago.

It is interesting to note that the invaluable value of the coelacanths stems from their antique lineage and from their position in the evolution since the prehistoric times.

With their limb-shaped primitive fins, these fishes are able to breathe in the air as well as to take oxygen from water. Which ranges them in the lineage of the species leading to the amphibians, and therefore to the rest of the tetrapods, ... and to man?

And if nothing is done to protect them today, the species run the risk of dying out because they are victims of uncontrolled catching and ... because their predators do not probably realize the fishes' scientific value for man.

There would be about 125 species of coelacanths itemized today.