228 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES!
Others, such as the lepospondyls, may or may not be related to the temnospondyl-
lissamphibian clade, so their inclusion is more questionable. And then there are the “anthra-
cosaurs” (fig. 11.3), a grade of tetrapods that are the sister taxa to the reptiles (more properly,
amniotes, as the next chapter will discuss). They don’t share the characters that define rep-
tiles or amniotes, so paleontologists have traditionally left them in the amphibian waste-
basket with the other tetrapods that are not amniotes. In this chapter, we will not use the
term “amphibian” further, but will stick with the clumsy but accurate term “non-amniote
tetrapod” when we mean frogs and salamanders and what most people call amphibians.
Lobe Fins Lead the Way
Then I turned the page and saw the sketch, at which I stared and stared, at first in puzzle-
ment, for I did not know of any fish of our own or indeed of any seas like that; it looked
more like a lizard. And then a bomb seemed to burst in my brain, and beyond that
sketch and the paper of the letter I was looking at a series of fishy creatures flashed up
as on a screen, fishes no longer here, fishes that have lived in dim past ages gone, and of
which often only fragmentary remains in rocks are known. I told myself sternly not to
be a fool, but there was something about the sketch that seized on my imagination and
told me that this was something far beyond the usual run of fishes in our seas. . . . I was
afraid of this thing, for I could see something of what it would mean if it were true, and
I also realized only too well what it would mean if I said it was what it was not.
—J. L. B. Smith, Old Fourlegs: The Story of the CoelacanthOn December 23, 1938, one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries of the past century
was made in the mouth of the Chalumna River near East London off the coast of South
Africa. Pulled out of a net from the trawler Nerine was a huge (almost 1.5 meters [or 5 feet]
long, and weighing 58 kilograms [or 127 pounds]) shiny silvery-blue fishlike creature, the
likes of which no fisherman had ever seen before (fig. 10.2). The local museum curator, Mar-
jorie Courtenay-Latimer, was called and immediately realized it was something of great sci-
entific importance, a new species never before caught in the waters off South Africa. As she
wrote later, it was “the most beautiful fish I had ever seen, five feet long, and a pale mauve
blue with iridescent silver markings.” Unfortunately, it was already dead and beginning to
rot rapidly in the hot austral summer weather. She did her best to preserve it, but it was so
large and rotting so fast that she eventually had to discard most of the innards and saved
only the skin. She then sent a sketch of it with her letter to the foremost authority on South
African fishes, James Leonard Brierly Smith, whose reaction when he opened her letter and
saw her sketch is given in the quote that opens this section. He finally got to see the specimen
on January 3, 1939, and as he later wrote,
Coelacanth—yes, God! Although I had come prepared, that first sight hit me like a
white-hot blast and made me feel shaky and queer, my body tingled. I stood as if
stricken to stone. Yes, there was not a shadow of a doubt, scale by scale, bone by bone,
fin by fin, it was a true coelacanth. It could have been one of those creatures of 200 mil-
lion years ago come alive again. I forgot everything else and just looked and looked,
and then almost fearfully went close up and touched and stroked. (Smith 1956:73)