The coelacanth is the “living fossil” fish caught off South Africa in 1938. On 22 December that year, museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer noticed the unusual fish among the catch brought into East London by fisherman Hendrik Goosen.
The fish was identified as a previously unknown living species, Latimeria chalumnae, later called the West Indian Ocean coelacanth. Scientists had believed coelacanths had disappeared from the fossil record at the end of the Cretaceous, so the discovery seemed to reveal an animal surviving tens of millions of years beyond its supposed extinction. It is often described as a Lazarus taxon for this reason.
“Living fossil” is a popular label, not a claim that the fish stopped evolving. Modern coelacanths have changed over time, and fossil coelacanths were more diverse in body form and lifestyle than the living species. Coelacanths are lobe-finned fish, making them more closely related to lungfish and land vertebrates than to most familiar ray-finned fish. A second living species, the Indonesian coelacanth, was recognized in the late 1990s.