“Living fossil” fish, member of an ancient suborder called crossopterygians (“fringe-finned” fish). Coelacanths were long thought to have become extinct during the same period in which the dinosaurs died out. Then in 1938 fishermen landed a living coelacanth off the coast of South Africa. The scientific world was stunned. The discovery of this fish (Latimeria chalumnae) raised the possibility that other creatures long thought extinct could still exist. The coelacanth has fins that somewhat resemble legs in both appearance and function. This led some scientists to conjecture that this fish (a forerunner of the amphibians) is ancestor to land animals, including humans; most, however, believe that the lungfish is more likely the water-land link.
Since 1938, about 200 coelacanths have been caught, most of them in the Indian Ocean off Grand Comoro Island. None of the 5-foot-long fish has survived more than a few hours, generally because of injuries inflicted accidentally or purposely (coelacanths have nasty teeth) by fishermen. Ironically, in fact, today the creature once thought to be extinct is in danger of becoming extinct in reality. In 1991, Dr. Hans Fricke, of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen, Germany, reported in the journal Nature that coelacanths, which live in deepwater lava caves near shore and which hunt for prey at depths up to about 700 meters (about 2,300 feet), are steadily decreasing in population, largely because of their encounters with fishermen.