Primitive fish with leg-like fins are thought to have become extinct during the period when dinosaurs lived. Later they were found, alive and well, living in the Indian Ocean. One of these fish is the coelacanth, a large fish up to 1 m long with strange leg-like fins. It was found to contain bones that were very like those of land-living vertebrate animals.
The first of these unknown fish was caught off the Comores Islands in the 1930s. It was later found that coelacanths were common enough to be a popular food. They have since been found in other places, always living in very deep water. Because they have hardly changed over many millions of years, coelacanths can be described as true ‘living fossils’.
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