Deep Sea Creature: The Coelacanth, Only Living Fossil

My Expedition and the Living Fossil

How would you describe science fiction movies as you watch them? In this article, I decided to take my movie down beneath the water…I mean fresh water, it can be soft or hard water but don't get it twisted, I admire nature as it displays its magnificence.

As I was taking my fictional expedition deep down over 1000 feet, I came across a sea creature known as The Coelacanth.

Rere to be found, this creature decided to take its home over 600-1000 feet down the sea. Definitely, I would be the first man to go down the sea with such depth.
This sea creature, known scientifically to be called Latimeria Chalumnae, ranges about 5 feet in size.
when I found it, for some moment I was wondering if I was bigger than it or it's bigger than me…I guess I should be longer than this creature because am a human right? that's if I ate lots of beans when I was much younger.

The coelacanth is an endangered animal, one of the oldest fish in the world and considered as a living fossil. 360 million years ago, it appeared in the ocean during the Devonian period until the end of Cretaceous when they were considered extinct alongside the dinosaurs and other marine reptiles.

This fish was thought to have gone extinct until it was later discovered by a South African museum custodian in the year 1938. Scientists were so amazed and were left in shock because they were astonished on how the living fossil escaped the Cretaceous extinction.

Later, in 1952 a second specimen was found in the coast of Comoros island in Africa near Madagascar and another was discovered in Indonesia in the year 1997. However, an analysis was carried out and discoveries were found that the Indonesian coelacanth was different from the African coelacanth although they came from the same ancestor.

Distinctive Description

Coelacanths can be described as a deep-sea creature that is large and plump because they can grow as long as six feet and weigh up to 200 pounds. Unlike most species like salmon tuna, guppies and goldfish which are ray-fined, which are supported by mostly the spines, the coelacanths are lobbed-fined and are covered with thick scales. In contrast to the ray-finned fishes, the fins of coelacanths are supported by fleshy stalklike structures and are closely related to lungfishes and the tetrapods.

The fins of a coelacanth contain bones that look like toes and are divided into three several lobes. Due to this characteristics, it is tagged as a lobe-finned fish. More so, the fins got a nickname called ‘old four legs’.

As we said earlier, there are only two known living species of coelacanths. The first habitat is near the Comoro Islands off the coast of Africa while the other is around the waters of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Other unique anatomical feature includes a hinged joint in the skull which allows the fish to open its jaws widely; a notochord which serves as a backbone instead of a vertebral column that acts as the backbone in other vertebrates. Another unique feature is that coelacanths can sense electricity. They have a rostral organ at the front of their mouth that uses electroreception to detect and avoid obstacles.