“You never forget your first living fossil. In my case, it was a Coelacanth preserved in a glass case at the Vancouver Aquarium. That it looked prehistoric was no surprise since it was supposed to have become extinct 65 million years ago. But in 1938 a living specimen was hauled from the depths of the Indian Ocean. In all that time it hadn’t changed much. Like the fossils of its ancestors it still had the fleshy limb-like fins that you’d expect to see on an animal in mid transition from water to land. But while it failed to evolve into a terrestrial creature – if in fact that was where it was heading - the Coelacanth succeeded in something even greater. It survived the second biggest extinction event on earth. Well done!”

Linda Aylesworth, Reporter at Global News.