The fish that time forgot

Here’s some good news for natural history/mystery fans. A second population of coelacanths has been discovered off the coast of Tanzania. Thought to have gone extinct in the late cretaceous period—about 65 million years ago—coelacanths were rediscovered in 1938 off the coast of South Africa. However, researchers believed there was only one breeding group of the species off Africa, in the sea around the Comoros Islands near Madagascar. That is, until now.

Recently, a team of scientists from the Tokyo Institute of Technology identified a second breeding population about 1000 kilometres north. They figure the newly discovered population may comprise hundreds of coelacanths. Click here to read the group’s results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Sates of America online journal.