African Coelacanths May Live to Be 100: Study

This evolutionarily ancient fish species has a lifespan that’s around five times longer than previously thought, and a gestation time of more than five years.

Written byCatherine Offord

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The African coelacanth, a rare species that’s stayed much the same for the last 400 million years, has a lifespan of about 100 years, around five times longer than previously thought, according to a paper published yesterday (June 17) in Current Biology. Researchers used polarized light microscopy to examine scales collected from 27 fish captured between 1953 and 1991 and estimated, based on the structural patterns in the specimens, that the individuals ranged in age from 5 to 84 years.

“[The] coelacanth appears to have one of, if not the slowest, life histories among marine fish, and close to those of deep-sea sharks and roughies,” study coauthor Kélig Mahé of the North Sea Fisheries Research Unit in Boulogne-sur-mer, France, tells BBC News. “These new pieces of information on coelacanths’ biology and life history are essential to the conservation and management of this species.”

The African coelacanth, ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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