The “living fossil” fish rediscovered off South Africa in 1938 is the coelacanth. The famous specimen was later named Latimeria chalumnae, or the West Indian Ocean coelacanth, after the Chalumna River and museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer.
On December 22, 1938, trawler captain Hendrik Goosen brought the strange blue-gray fish into East London. Courtenay-Latimer noticed it among the catch and contacted ichthyologist J. L. B. Smith, who recognized it as a fish previously known only from fossils. Its discovery was astonishing because coelacanth fossils appeared to date from more than 65 million years earlier.
“Living fossil” is a popular label, not a claim that the animal has remained unchanged. Modern coelacanths have evolved, and there are two recognized living species: Latimeria chalumnae in the western Indian Ocean and the Indonesian coelacanth, Latimeria menadoensis. Genetic evidence also shows that lungfish, rather than coelacanths, are the closest living fish relatives of land vertebrates.