Coelacanth
Depth: 200 m · Twilight Zone
The coelacanth was thought extinct for 65 million years until a living one turned up in a net in 1938. It moves its fleshy fins in a crossing pattern, almost like an animal walking. It is a living fossil from the age of the dinosaurs.
For scientists
Latimeria moves its paired lobe fins in an alternating gait like a four-legged animal, showing how close these fish are to the first land vertebrates. A jelly-filled rostral organ in its snout senses the faint electric fields of prey. By day it rests in lava caves on steep slopes and hunts slowly in open water at night; its young are born alive.
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