macropoma lewesiensis

Macropoma lewesiensis is an extinct coelacanth fish that lived in the Cretaceous period (145—65 million years ago).Thanks to exquisitely preserved fossils in the English Chalk, scientists have been able to describe in detail the morphology of this fish and the other sea creatures that shared its habitat.Coelacanths were for a long time thought to be an extinct group of fishes, with the last appearance in the Cretaceous, and were only known from fossils.However, in 1938 an exciting discovery changed this idea forever. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator at the East London Museum, found a very unusual fish in a fisherman's catch in South Africa.Unable to identify it, she contacted the ichthyologist JLB Smith at Rhodes University who identified the fish as a coelacanth, and recognised its importance as the living representative of this long-extinct group. He named it Latimeria chalumnae to honor Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer for her discovery, and after the Chalumna River where it was caught. Specimen of the coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae. Coelacanths were thought to have died out 85 million years ago but have since been found off the south-eastern coast of Africa and in Sulawesi in 1998.