About the Author

Keith S. Thomson holds a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University and is a former dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University. He is now CEO of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Reviews

"Authoritative and eminently readable, deserving of a wide audience." -- James D. Ebert, National Academy of Sciences "[A] fantastic fish story... [Thomson] successfully snags the reader's attention." -- James Ferrell - New York Times Book Review "One of the classic stories of zoology, told with uncommon authority and grace." -- Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University "A marvelous book describing the discovery of the coelacanth and its importance to evolutionary biology... Fascinating reading for scientist and non-scientist alike." -- George D. Langdon, president, American Museum of N

"Authoritative and eminently readable, deserving of a wide audience." -- James D. Ebert, National Academy of Sciences "[A] fantastic fish story... [Thomson] successfully snags the reader's attention." -- James Ferrell - New York Times Book Review "One of the classic stories of zoology, told with uncommon authority and grace." -- Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University "A marvelous book describing the discovery of the coelacanth and its importance to evolutionary biology... Fascinating reading for scientist and non-scientist alike." -- George D. Langdon, president, American Museum of N

The 1938 discovery of a strange, five-foot, 250-pound fish off the coast of South Africa excited the scientific community worldwide. Identified as Latimeria chalumnae , a coelacanth, the fish was previously known only in the fossil record of the Cretaceous period. In 1952 a second specimen was caught in the western Indian Ocean off the Comoro Islands, then a French territory. The authorities allowed only French scientists access to the fish, but after the islands' independence in the mid-'70s, the fish became more widely available for research. Thomson, director of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, studied the first fresh-frozen specimen and has written an intriguing biological detective story, tracing the coelacanth's morphology and biology, and placing it in the evolutionary scale. Illustrations. (June)