Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 111, March 2014, pp. 1-9. | Page 5

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heavy armoured scales. After the catch had been landed at East London, the
curator of the small local museum, Miss Courtenay-Latimer, came down to look
it over. She noticed this peculiar fish and although she was not a fish specialist,
she became convinced that it was of great importance. She wrote to Professor
J.B.L. Smith of Grahamstown University, the greatest authority on African fish,
describing it briefly. Before he could get to the specimen, its entrails had
decomposed so badly that they had to be thrown away, so it was a gutted
specimen that he eventually saw. In spite of this, and the fact that it was so large,
he recognised it immediately as a coelacanth. He named it Latimeria and
informed an astonished world that a creature thought to have been extinct for 70
million years was still alive (Attenborough 1979, Khalaf 1987).

The Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) Model at the Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum
Alexander Koenig in Bonn, Germany. Photo by: Prof. Dr. Norman Ali Bassam Khalafvon Jaffa. 06.01.2003. http://www.flickr.com/photos/50022881@N00/10313395814/
Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin – Number 111 – March 2014