In December 1938 a museum curator sifting through a fisherman's catch in a South African port lifted out a heavy blue fish that science had known only from fossils and presumed extinct since the age o

This article recounts the 1938 discovery of the coelacanth, a fish previously thought to be extinct since the dinosaur era. It highlights the role of museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer in identifying the specimen despite a lack of formal zoological training.