"The Fish of all Time"

This is the astounding coelacanth ("see-la-kanth"), the fusion of life and time, that following a supposed extinction of 65 million years, head-lined into human consciousness with its discovery alive in 1938. Called "Old Four Legs" and the "Living Fossil," the Coelacanth quickly became the continuing obsessive focus of journalists, crypto biologists, scientists, eccentric explorers, aquariums, and divers .

Known as the living fossil, the coelacanth was thought to be extinct for many thousands of years.
Then amazingly, one appeared alive.
The ancestors of this fish date to the dinosaur era several million years ago and it was thought that all that we would ever see of it were fossils, which appeared many years ago.

In 1938, the fish appeared magically alive, as if it were always part of the ecology, which in truth it has been apparently.
Completely unique in his place in the undersea kingdom this fish has stimulated imagination with what we don’t know about him.
He predates the dinosaurs by a few million years and was thought to be gone over 30 million years ago.
Yet with his “proto legs” here he is. In search of the coelacanth several people have died
In November of 2000 Jerome Hamlin became one of the very first non scientific persons to ever witness the coelacanth swimming in their place of residence.
On site in his pages is a first hand tale of his dive in Jago Jago to view the coelacanth in a cave near the Comoro Islands.