History and Science
Why is the coelacanth important to science?
Palaeontology is a Greek word for the study of prehistoric plants and animals. Fossils are the remnants or impressions of plants and animals that lived before the present. The original meaning of the word `fossil` is derived from the Latin verb `fodere`, to dig, as fossils were usually encountered as petrified artifacts preserved in rock and stone. Charles Darwin coined the phrase `living fossil` to describe the East Asian ginkgo tree, but he did not mean by that a fossil that had somehow come back to life. Rather he meant a life form that had evolved very little for millions of years - a case of arrested evolution. Examples are cycads, elephant shrews and broad-nosed crocodiles. The closest relatives of `living fossils` have been extinct for a long time.
The scientific discovery of Latimeria chalumnae in 1938 caused a sensation in the scientific world because it is the only living member of a very old group of fishes, the actinistians (Coelacanthimorpha). About 120 species of coelacanths are known from fossils. They were predominantly small marine fish (though some lived in freshwater) which were thought to have died out at the end of the Mesozoic era more than 60 million Years ago. They flourished in the Triassic; a fossil of a coelacanth (Whiteia) was discovered in the Orange Free State which dates to that time. The Coelacanthimorpha and lungfishes are separate side-branches of the primitive fish group that gave rise to the amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Although Latimeria is not a `missing link` in the story of evolution, it is the sole survivor of a line of development that otherwise became extinct. From its anatomy, biochemistry, physiology and behaviour scientists can learn much about the processes of evolution.
How the coelacanth became known to science
Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer
Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was born in East London on 24th February 1907. From early childhood she was interested in birds and mammals, and fossil collecting was also a hobby of hers. In 1930 she was appointed Curator of the newly established East London Museum which had at that time a very small collection of bird specimens. She worked hard to create a display of the natural history of the Eastern Cape. Since fishing was a major local industry, she decided to concentrate on marine life. She interviewed fishing clubs and managers of fishing trawlers; specimens were enthusiastically donated and she made mounts of the small fish. She first met JLB Smith, then a Lecturer in Chemistry at Rhodes University College, in December 1933 when he visited the museum during a camping trip at Igoda. He had been advised by doctors to spend his vacations in the open air because of ill health, and his love of angling soon turned into scientific interest. He was very impressed with the work she was doing, and offered to help her with any specimens which she might want to have classified because she had no books on fish at the museum.
In November 1936 she and her parents visited Bird Island where she spent weeks amassing a huge collection of sponges, seaweeds, sea shells and bird eggs. She also went out to sea in the Irvin & Johnson trawler, Nerine, and made friends with the Captain, Hendrik Goosen, who took her crates of specimens back to East London and thereafter saved interesting fishes from the trawl nets for her attention.
On December 22, 1938, Captain Goosen and the Nerine put into East London harbour with the usual catch of sharks, rays, sawfish and rat-tail fish. But there was one unusual fish amongst the catch that had been caught in about 70 metres near the mouth of the Chalumna River. Once ashore Captain Goosen left word at the Museum that there were several specimens at the ship for Miss Latimer. At first she said that she was too busy because she was hard at work cleaning and articulating the fossil reptile bones collected from Tarkastad. But as it was so near Christmas time she decided to go and wish the crew a `Happy Christmas` and took a taxi to the docks. There, attracted by a blue fin amid the pile of sharks, she found a magnificent fish. She and her assistant put it in a bag and persuaded a reluctant taxi driver to take it to the museum in the boot of his car. It measured 150 cm and weighed 57.5kg. From its hard bony scales with sharp, prickly spines and paired fins looking rather like legs, she knew that it must be some kind of primitive fish. But her greatest problem was to preserve it until it could be identified. It was extremely hot, the fish was too big to go into a bath and she could not find any organisation willing to store it in a freezer. Although she was told by experts that it was only a type of rock cod and that she was making a fuss about nothing, she persisted in her attempts to save the fish for science. At first it was wrapped in cloths soaked in formalin but eventually, on the 26th, Mr Center, a taxidermist, skinned it. Unfortunately the internal organs were thrown away. Marjorie went home disappointed and worried that she had not saved all the soft parts. What she had done, however, was to write immediately to her friend, JLB Smith, and send him her famous sketch of the strange fish.
James Leonard Brierley Smith
The next part of the story concerns JLB Smith, at the time enjoying a working holiday in Knysna. The next fourteen years of his life were to be dominated by this first coelacanth and an almost obsessive search for a second specimen. JLB Smith, born in 1897 at Graaff-Reinet was a self- taught ichthyologist who had published several papers on the marine fishes of South Africa. He knew at once when he opened Marjorie`s letter that though the last coelacanths were supposed to have died out with the dinosaurs, he was looking at a drawing of a fossil fish:
'One of my most constant and peculiar obsessions had always been a conviction that I was destined to discover some quite outrageous creature'.
He sent to Cape Town for a copy of Arthur Smith Woodward`s Catalogue of Fossil Fishes of the British Museum, and, after he had received it, positively identified Marjorie`s unusual fish as a coelacanth. But he did not commit himself or risk his reputation in the scientific community until some time later, he travelled to East London and saw the specimen for himself:
'Yes, there was not a shadow of doubt, scale by scale, bone by bone, fin by fin, it was a true coelacanth. It could have been one of those creatures of 200 million years ago come alive again.'
He gave the fish its formal scientific name, Latimeria chalumnae in honour of Miss Courtenay-Latimer who had preserved it, and the river near which it was trawled. From January to June 1939 JLB Smith and his young wife, Margaret, worked furiously on the first scientific paper describing the coelacanth, completing it just four days before the birth of their son William. All this time the coelacanth, pervasive smell and all, stayed in their house. It was then ready to be displayed at the East London Museum. Thousands of people visited the museum to see the famous fish.
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