Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth

Download or read book Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth written by Keith Stewart Thomson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1992-07-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An engrossing tale of obsession, adventure and scientific reasoning." —Betty Ann Kevles, Los Angeles Times In the winter of 1938, a fishing boat by chance dragged from the Indian Ocean a fish thought extinct for 70 million years. It was a coelacanth, which thrived concurrently with dinosaurs and pterodactyls—an animal of major importance to those who study the history of vertebrate life. Living Fossil describes the life and habitat of the coelcanth and what scientists have learned about it during fifty years of research. It is an exciting and very human story, filled with ambitious and brilliant people, that reveals much about the practice of modern science.