Fisherman catches 'living fossil'

An extremely rare "living fossil" caught by a fisherman in Indonesia is being examined by scientists. The 1.3m-long (4.3ft), 50kg (110lb) coelacanth is only the second ever to have been captured in Asia and has been described as a "significant find". An autopsy and genetic tests are now being carried out to determine more about the specimen. Coelacanths provide researchers with a window into the past; their fossil record dates back 350 million years. These fish are odd in appearance, looking almost as if they have legs because of their large-lobed fins - they are sometimes dubbed "old four legs". The blue fish can also perform headstands, hovering with their head just over the sea floor, possibly to detect food. Scientists previously thought the fish group had died out about 70 million years ago, but were shocked when in 1938 they discovered that a specimen had been caught in a fishing net off the east coast of South Africa.

Since then, more than 300 specimens of the modern coelacanth species (Latimeria chalumnae) have been found in the waters around the Comoros Islands, which are situated in the Western Indian Ocean, and the eastern coast of Africa. However, scientists were surprised once again when a coelacanth was discovered thousands of kilometres away in Indonesia in 1998. It looked similar to the coelacanths found near Africa, but genetic analysis revealed that the genomes differed by about 3.5%, and it was described as a new species called Latimeria menadoensis.