Coelacanth genome surfaces: Unexpected insights from a fish with a 300-million-year-old fossil record
Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - 13:00
in Paleontology & Archaeology
An international team of researchers has decoded the genome of the African coelacanth. The species was once thought to be extinct, but a living coelacanth was discovered off the African coast in 1938. Coelacanths today closely resemble the fossilized skeletons of their more than 300-million-year-old ancestors. Its genome confirms what many researchers had long suspected: genes in coelacanths are evolving more slowly than in other organisms.