Coelacanths live for as long as people

ON DECEMBER 23rd 1938 Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a curator at the East London Museum, in South Africa, dropped by her local fish market. While there, she spotted the most beautiful fish she had ever seen. It was pale mauve, nearly two metres long, and had silvery markings. Though she had no inkling at the time, it turned out to be part of a group called the coelacanths, hitherto believed to have died out with the dinosaurs.This find, called in Courtenay-Latimer’s honour, showed coelacanths are still very much alive. It was hailed as the most important zoological discovery of the century. Now, work just published in by Kélig Mahé of the Fisheries Laboratory, in Boulogne, France, suggests that besides having lasted collectively for more than 400m years, coelacanths also hang around for a long time as individuals. Dr Mahé’s study indicates they have similar lifespans to human beings, putting them among the world’s longest-lived vertebrates.