The Eureka Event of the Four-Legged Fish

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n                        I have written recently here andnhere about ‘living fossils’, creatures that have survived unchanged fromnancient times, but there is another type of living fossil, the Lazarus taxon,nwhich is an animal once thought to be extinct until living specimens arendiscovered in the wild. One of the most famous of these is the coelacanth, anfish that first appeared in the Palaeozoic era and which was only known fromnthe fossil record until fishermen caught a living coelacanth off the shores ofnSouth Africa. 

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nOn December 22^nd 1938, Miss MarjorienCourtenay-Latimer, the curator of the East London, South Africa museum was called to thenlocal wharf to examine a strange fish that had turned up in the nets of thenfishing boat Nerine belonging to Captain Hendrik Goosen. MissnCourtenay-Latimer, despite lacking formal qualifications and at the relativelynyoung age of 24, had been appointed the first full-time curator of the museumnin 1931, with a tiny budget of £700 per year, and had set about collecting specimensnof local flora and fauna, putting the word about that she was interested innanything unusual that the residents discovered. With her assistant Enoch, shentook a taxi to the harbour and was shown a pile of odd fishes, amongst whichnshe noticed a large, heavily scaled blue fish with peculiar fins; the trawlernmen all told her that they had never seen anything like it in over thirty yearsnof working the waters. In spite of protests from the driver, she and Enoch gotnthe fish into the taxi and took it back to the museum, where she dashed of anletter and rough sketch of the fish to Dr J L B Smith, an ichthyologist atnRhodes University, Grahamstown. 

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nNot knowing what to do next with the massivenfish (it was five feet long and weighed 127 lbs.), she borrowed a handcart andntook it to a local taxidermist who did work for the museum. Marjorie’s letternreached Smith on January 3^rd 1939, (the postal system was quitenrudimentary) and he immediately went to the local Post Office and sent thisntelegram, 

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nThenfollowing morning he returned to the Post Office and waited for three hoursnuntil the expected call came through – the insides of the fish had started tonrot and had been destroyed, but the body was being preserved. An attempt tonphotograph the fish had been foiled when the film was found to be faulty.nFurther letters describing the fish were sent together with samples of thenscales, and when his university examination commitments were fulfilled, Smith leftnhis home at Knysna on February 8^th 1939 for East London. Floods,nrainstorms, mudslides and washed-out roads hampered his journey and it took himneight days to travel the 350 miles to the coast. On arrival, a caretaker tooknhim to an inner room at the museum, where he saw the 

nJ B L Smith The Search Beneath the Sea 1956

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nThe Natural History Museum in Londonnwas contacted, and although Smith sent a description he refused to send anphotograph (he needed to describe the find with a full description andnillustrations in a recognised scientific paper if he was to be able to name thenspecies and claim the associated recognition). A description and photographnwere published in Nature on March 18^th 1939 as A LivingnFish of the Mesozoic Type, and the name ‘Latimeria chalumnae J L BnSmith’ was accepted – Latimeria after Miss Courtenay-Latimer, chalumnaenafter the Chalumna River from which it was taken, and ‘J L B Smith’ for thenfirst person to identify it. 

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nImmediately, Smith was inundated with letters,ncables, telephone calls and requests; some were genuine enquiries fromnacademics, some were ‘proofs’ that his claims were mistaken, some came fromnpeople who had caught other strange fishes, one lady wrote to say that she hadnheard he was interested in ‘old’ things and that she was in possession of anviolin that had been in her family for over one hundred years, and he gotnletters from people world-wide admonishing him for the preposterous claim thatnthe coelacanth was millions of years old, as this clearly opposed Scripture, manynadding that 

nPlus ça change. 

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nThe coelacanth wasntaken to Grahamstown, where Smith began a detailed dissection and preparednplates for a monograph, but his work was hastened when Miss Courtenay-Smithnwrote to say that the East London museum had inundated with visitors hoping tonsee this world-wide phenomena and many influential people had been disappointednnot to find it there. A compromise was reached, the fish was returned undernpolice escort, and placed on display – the Director of South African museumsntold Miss Courtenay-Latimer to type a letter to the British museum, offeringnthe specimen for sale, whereupon the formidable curator rounded on him,nrefusing to type it and expressing in no uncertain terms her opposition to thenplan, and threatening to resign if it was done. The Director heard hernsympathetically and ended up entirely agreeing with her stance. The specimennwould stay at East London, bringing fame and much-needed revenue to the museum.nThe clouds of war in September 1939 brought a halt to the coelacanth story fornthe time being.

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nIn July 1946, Smith approachednthe Council for Scientific and Industrial Research for money to fund a ResearchnFellowship, which was granted in September, and so Smith resigned from hisnposition in the Chemistry department and in 1947 began his new role in thenDepartment of Ichthyology, with plans in his mind to write a popular book aboutnthe coelacanth (which, he had been assured, could possibly earn him as much asna thousand pounds). Smith had leaflets printed in English, French andnPortuguese, with a picture of the coelacanth, offering a £100 reward for anynspecimens delivered, which were distributed in East Africa, Madagascar and thenislands in between. 

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nThroughout the late 1940s and into the 50s, Smith lookednfor another coelacanth, but apart from one tale from a fisherman in Mozambique,nhe drew a blank. In 1952, Smith met Eric Hunt, a commercial fisherman, innZanzibar, and Hunt offered to take some of Smith’s leaflets to the Comoresnislands, where he was planning to catch sharks. On December 24^th,nthe ship carrying Smith and his wife back home to South Africa docked atnDurban, and they were sitting in the lounge talking with friends, when a juniornofficer brought him a telegram, which had been redirected from Grahamstown, 

nDzaoudzi, the junior officer toldnSmith, was on the tiny island of Pamanzi in the Comores. Smith sent a returnncable, 

nand set aboutnlooking for a means of getting to the Comores. Almost everything was closed fornthe Christmas holiday and Smith found himself frustrated at every attempt tonfind transport. Finally, through his local MP Vernon Shearer, he sought the aidnof Prime Minister P F Malan, who authorised a South African Air Force DC3nDakota to fly Smith to Pamanzi. He arrived on December 29^th, and wasntaken immediately to see the fish, which, shedding unashamed tears, he identifiednas another coelacanth. 

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nAt first, he proposed the name Malania anjouanaenin honour of the Prime Minister’s aid, but it was later ascertained that thenfish had damaged a dorsal fin and its tail during a shark attack and was of thensame species as Latimeria chalumnae. Smith and his precious cargonreturned to South Africa on December 31^st 1952, and was againnfrustrated in getting news of the new find out, due to the New Year holiday,nbut eventually word was cabled to the rest of the world. The French, who hadnauthority over the Camores, were concerned that the discovery had been made inntheir waters, and demanded that the specimen be returned, but negotiations,nprevarications and the eventual capture of another Camorean coelacanth broughtnthe affair to an end. Since then, many other coelacanths have been caught,nalthough there is now a ban on their capture, and other have been filmed in thenwild – it is estimated there is a population of about 500 individuals. 

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nThenscientific importance of the discovery of the coelacanth cannot benoverestimated – the fossils of a species that appeared over 400 million yearsnago, and was thought to have died out 50 million years ago, have been foundnacross the world and point to the origins of all vertebrate animals, ourselvesnincluded. Embryos, again including our own, exhibit gill slits and tails atncertain stages of development, again pointing to fishy origins, and thenfins/legs of the coelacanth indicate a transitional move from marine tonland-dwelling animals. The coelacanth was discovered less than seventy-fivenyears ago – the second example just sixty years ago – which begs the question,nAre there other cryptids out there waiting to be found? I like to think Yes,nthere are.

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nMiss Marjorie Courtenay-Latimerndied on May 17^th 2004, aged 97. She never married. 

nDr J L B Smithnlived until January 7^th 1968, when, after a long illness, he tookncyanide. 

nEric Hunt was lost at sea attempting to save others off the Camores, on May 25^th 1956.

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