‘Living Fossil’ Gets Its Genome Sequenced
by Amy Maxmen
The coelacanth isn’t called a “living fossil” for nothing. The 2-meter-long, 90 kg fish was thought to have gone extinct 70 million years ago—until a fisherman caught one in 1938—and the animal looks a lot like its fossil ancestors dating back 300 million years. Now, the first analysis of the coelacanth’s genome reveals why the fish may have changed so little over the ages. It also may help explain how fish like it moved onto land long ago.
“I’m very excited about this paper because coelacanths are animals that we really want to know more about,” says Per Ahlberg, a paleontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden who was not involved with the study.
In order to sequence a coelacanth’s (Latimeria chalumnae) genome, scientists required fresh tissue and blood. That’s no easy task: These fish dwell in deep-sea caves and are exceedingly rare. Only 309 have been spotted in the past 75 years, off the east coast of sub-Saharan Africa and Indonesia. Moreover, caught coelacanths die immediately because of the change in pressure and temperature, and under the hot tropical sun, their DNA quickly degrades…
(read more: Science NOW) (photo: Alberto Fernandez)
whoa is that a relicanth?
