I have a copy of the original book, called "Old Four-legs" written about the Coelacanth and Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, and written by Prof JLB Smith, renowned ichthyologist of the time. The book is surely long since out of print! If you ever find a copy, snap it up. Very dry and lacking in literary skill, but very exciting!
Its the oldest living relative to all land creatures. back fins for legs and feet, front fins for arms and hands, a tail, gills which mammals and reptiles lost on land. jaws and teeth for chewing. They even carry their eggs internally through prenatal development and give birth to live young. They have all the properties of a land creature in water.
To think that the coelacanth is actually more closely related to the men filming it than it is to any of the other fish swimming in the ocean with it is insane!
@@TjoaWeiHanthat fish you are looking at is about 330 to 450 million years old brother it was thought to be extinct but was found in the 1930s I believe but yes that what your looking at is very close to what humans would have been before what we are now
@@TjoaWeiHan Coelacanths are part of the sarcopterygian clade of vertebrates which also includes the lungfish and the tetrapods like salamanders, lizards, birds, whales and us humans whereas all of the other saltwater bony fish are actinopterygians! 🤯 Lungfish are the only other extant non-tetrapod sarcopterygians, but they are only found in freshwater.
@I have Cancer Dinosaurs appeared around 50 million years ago, during the Triassic. These bois appeared during the Devonian, 400 million years ago. They survived the greatest mass extinction ever, the Permian.
Is it weird if I get a little teary-eyed when I watch this?. I just thought that for this specie to survive for so long is just beautiful, it is a wonder. I hope they are left alone to reproduce and restore their numbers. I mean, maybe there's far more than we think, humans haven't been here too long, nothing compared to Coelacanths.
They are full of oils high in urea and indigestible wax esters. Nobody eats them because they cause gastrointestinal distress and explosive projectile diarrhea. They have no natural predators for the same reason, anything that tries to eat them will get violently sick. These are not "primitive" fish at all btw they have some fairly advanced features not found in any other modern fish. Obviously they've been doing some evolving in the last 60 million years. Same basic design but with a lot of improvements added on.
This animal is actually breathtaking I caught myself looking in awe at just how majestic it is and it feels like it is straight out of prehistoric times completely unchanged like a living relic
The oldest known coelacanth fossils are over 410 million years old. Coelacanths were thought to have become extinct in the late cretaceous around 66 million years ago, but were rediscovered in 1938 off the coast of South Africa.
Just to clarify, it has not survived 500 million years unchanged. Coelacanths are an entire order of fish, and we have two species of coelacanth living today. There have been many, many different species of coelacanth, with all different kinds living all kinds of ways. Think of another order of fish, catfish. There's not just one species of catfish, there's like 3000 of them. And in the 100 million years they've existed there have been many, many more. Same with coelacanths at one time.
@@JasonJBrunetOne would expect differentiation over such a long span of time and with divergent ecosystems. On my studio property in WV, there are fossils of lycopods larger than modern pine, and today their ancestors grow in the same location but they are only a few inches tall.
It's amazing that despite the fact we have fossils of these guys, they managed to survive.....millions of years....living besides the most ancient of creatures
A creature we thought had been extinct since prehistoric times is actually still alive, and almost unchanged from its original time on this planet. Fuck, Earth is amazing.
I saw this on TV and immediately knew how powerful it was to see this, this fish has been around for so long, so many species both land and water have came and had their eras and gone extinct but this fish is still here.. just amazing to see. I jst hope hmans don't mess up the deepest parts of the ocean like we love to mess up the land and the more shallow waters
Absolutely stunning, nothing left to say. It looks just like the other prehistoric fishes you’d find in a museum. Also resembles a lungfish too if you look at the facial structure.
Beautiful! Random, but I can't get over the fact that the one dude went diving in regular clothes, in a Ocean, with God knows what other kind of other creatures down there.
I'm personally not qualified to say they would or wouldn't. What I can say is, you never know the way creatures adapt what could be hidden from us. Mime_Jr
sonny, this page is for grown ups. stop calling people names, it's not nice. now run along back to your 5 year old friends and play nice. if you behave maybe we'll let you try on your big boy pants next birthday
i now this is a very late reply, but thank you for this. His death still makes me tear up, in my opinion, one of the greatest humans ever to live on this planet.
I know that this is a creature thats been around for millions of years, but I thought the most amazing part was the pattern it had on its scales. it was beautiful
I fully intend to go South Africa hopefully within the next five years specifically to go diving and hopefully see one in person. They are my favourite fish and one of my favourite animals, and I do not want to miss the opportunity to see one since they are critically endangered. It will require a tonne of training and equipment, but my life would not be complete without seeing one of these masterpieces.
I remember researching this fish from 2nd grade when i saw it in a book which cataloged all dinosaurs. Couldn't even pronounce the name then but i studied throughout school and after. It was supposed to be extinct for millions of years! Just incredible! I want to travel to africa and see one now
Animal Crossing introduced me, and these ancient creatures are just breathtaking, no doubt they're my favorite fish. I'd love to get the chance to make a dive like this for such an encounter.
After hearing the name as a kid, I spent years rolling it around my mouth without any idea what animal it referred to. It must be one of the most beautiful, most perfectly enchanting words I have ever had the pleasure to know. I would find myself muttering it reflectively at times, in a sort of reverent trance, chanting those beautiful and strange syllables. The silent letters and ambiguous 'c's slide around to make the word come alive- I sought to pronounce them as no man had pronounced before, groping in the etymological void for meaning. Finally last year, I looked the thing up on Wikipedia. I cannot describe my rapture. Such a fitting beast for the name I could never have imagined. Ancient and mysterious, a fish which should be extinct. A fish unchanged in shape since its cousin won the race onto dry land. A fish almost gaudy with beautiful limbs and scales, and all the more adept in its element. Lurking beneath the world, a lonely relic lost and forgotten among the tides of seas and ages. I pray for them to live forever as an eternal reminder to the world of its own youth.
Had I been diving there I most certainly would have been doing cartwheels !! I just can't imagine seeing with my own eyes a Coelecanth . I would bow to it, I would be honored to be in its very presence !!🙂
dude, that fish species has been through a hell of a lot worse, the thing survived multiple mass extinctions and has been around for countless millenia. some lights aren't going to bother it to any point worth stressing over
I've heard of it, but never really paid attention to how monumental of a discovery it was until recently. I also never realized how large or interesting they were. Absolutely awesome. But don't, for a second think we're done finding new (and possibly prehistoric) species in the ocean depths. We know more about the universe than we do the ocean deep.
Over dramatic fake conversation aside, this is incredible. A real once in a lifetime experience for the crew - something they can tell their grandkids about. I'd give my back teeth to have been there.
Read a book about the discovery of Coelacanth, when I was a kid, 50 years ago, got to see a real one preserved in formaldehyde at the Vancouver aquarium when I was a teenager. Fascinating to see this live footage.
Oh my God, I get goosebumps every time I see this video... I've seen another video where they found multiple Coelacanths in a Fish Market somewhere in North Africa and Indonesia (I hope we don't fish them to extinction)... This makes you wonder, If Coelacanths survived multiple Mass Extinctions, what other prehistoric creatures survived???... I for one believe that we will find more of such prehistoric creatures coming back to life as we venture deeper and further into the ocean... I would love to see the Megalodon, Mosasaurus, Rhizodont (fresh Water fish) and Orthacanthus (fresh Water fish) making a come back too...
The internet the past few weeks: “The coelacanth has just been discovered to be alive after millions of years!” This documentary: “Am I a joke to you?”
@@naimulislam9668 legit, I’m scrolling through TikTok alone and people are like “tHiS pReHiStoRiC FiSh WaS jUsT fOuNd aLiVe!!” And I’m like, “Well maybe in a different place than the two spots where they thrive, but they’ve been found long before this. Not to mention people that report it clearly have no idea how to pronounce the name. “Koala-canth” “Cleo-canth” “Cole-canth” Like, dude, y’all can’t be serious
Its strange to imagine it doesn't even know its almost identical ancestors go back 400 million years, its unaware of the time that has passed, since it evolved to this stable state.
Its so beautiful to see this creature and the way its locomoting in the water its like we are looking at a last preserved natural history moment from millions of years ago, i know animals keep evolving and even if coelancath is called "living fossil" its different from the extinct species but it still is magnificent to at least have this one, it gives a good idea how its extinct relatives might have been like when they were alive
I know them from ps1 game when i was a kid, at first i thought they were not a real fish and then i tried googling them and found out they're real but extinct, and then a few years ago a fisherman from my country caught 1 of them accidentally im happy but also sad he died because got caught.
Coelacanths are such amazing creatures. They have such a primordial design. Their tails are more reminiscing of prehistoric marine fish than the modern types. And though not dinosaurs, do look really saurian.
