The Scientist Staff | Feb 5, 1989 | 3 min read
Francisco J. Ayala Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of California Irvine, Calif. Latimeria chalumnae was discovered 50 years ago, one of a group of fishes (coelacanths) thought to have died out 80 million years ago. Latimeria raised hopes of gathering direct information on the transition from fish to amphibians, because coelacanths were thought to be ancestral to the tetrapods. Studies of Latimeria anatomy and physiology have shown that it is not the missing link betw