329: Coelacanth

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 (knysnamuseums.co.za/pages/the-coelacanth)” - Knysna Museum

• “The Discovery (ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/coelacanth/coela…)” - UC Museum of Paleontology’s website

• “Earliest known coelacanth skull extends the range of anatomically modern coelacanths to the Early Devonian (researchgate.net/publication/223972780_Earlies…)” - Min Zhu et al., Nature Communications, April 2012

• “Animated Life: The Living Fossil Fish | HHMI BioInteractive Video (youtube.com/watch?v=HJ3yLh_CYg4)”

• “The coelacanth rostral organ is a unique low-resolution electro-detector that facilitates the feeding strike (nature.com/articles/srep08962)” - Rachel M. Berquist et al., Scientific Reports, March 2015

• “New scale analyses reveal centenarian African coelacanths (cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00752-1)” - Kélig Mahé et al., Current Biology, August 2021

• “Neurocranial development of the coelacanth and the evolution of the sarcopterygian head (researchgate.net/publication/332487542_Neurocr…)” - Hugo Dutel et al., Nature, May 2019

• “Buoyancy and hydrostatic balance in a West Indian Ocean coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae (link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12915-022-0…)” - Henrik Lauridsen et al., BMC Biology, August 2022

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