Documentary about the Coelacanth, a prehistoric bony fish believed to have been long extinct until one was caught in 1938 off the southern coast of Africa. No trace was found again until May 2000 when a colony of the fish were discovered and filmed. The Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) is an enigmatic and important species of fish. It is the only living member (along with a recently discovered second species of Latimeria) of the lobe-finned fishes, a group believed by some to be the sister-group of the terrestrial vertebrates. Early naturalists, who had studied the fossil records, had long been puzzled and intrigued by this creature, with its lobed, limb-like fins. But it was only with the publication of Darwin’s Origin Of the Species, in 1859, and his theory of evolution, that its true significance first became apparent. For here was a fossil species that answered the critics who poured scorn on the very idea that fish could somehow have walked out of the sea and later diversified ...
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