329: Coelacanth

Episode notes

Don’t call it a comeback, coelacanth’s been here for years. We discuss life on Earth 400 million years ago, a military escort mission, our own fish ancestors, five year pregnancies, underwater handstands, an unnecessarily complicated puzzle in the third generation Pokémon games, and so much more.

Works Cited:

• “The Coelacanth” – Knysna Museum
• “The Discovery” – UC Museum of Paleontology’s website
• “Earliest known coelacanth skull extends the range of anatomically modern coelacanths to the Early Devonian” – Min Zhu et al., Nature Communications, April 2012
• “Animated Life: The Living Fossil Fish | HHMI BioInteractive Video”
• “The coelacanth rostral organ is a unique low-resolution electro-detector that facilitates the feeding strike” – Rachel M. Berquist et al., Scientific Reports, March 2015
• “New scale analyses reveal centenarian African coelacanths” – Kélig Mahé et al., Current Biology, August 2021
• “Neurocranial development of the coelacanth and the evolution of the sarcopterygian head” – Hugo Dutel et al., Nature, May 2019
• “Buoyancy and hydrostatic balance in a West Indian Ocean coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae” – Henrik Lauridsen et al., BMC Biology, August 2022

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