Latimeria

Comorian coelacanth ( Latimeria chalumnae ). Preparation of a 170 cm long and 60 kg female, exhibited in the Vienna Natural History Museum

Latimeria is the only extant genus of coelacanth ( Coelacanthimorpha ). It was named after the museum curator Marjorie Courtenay - Latimer, who discovered in 1938 a captive of fishermen copy ( Comorian coelacanth (L. chalumnae )) in the area of ​​East London. Until then, this subclass of meat -finned fishes ( Sarcopterygii ) was considered extinct. It was named in 1939 by the Fund ichthyologist James Leonard Brierley Smith.

The genus is widely described as monotypic and then only consists of the Comorian coelacanth. In the 1990s, however, was thousands of miles from the home of the Comoros coelacanth, discovered in the Celebes Sea on the coast of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, another coelacanth population. If these animals regarded as a separate species, this after the discovery site as Manado coelacanth ( Latimeria menadoensis ) is called.

Latimerien has a small, simple and elongated brain with a length of about 40 mm, a maximum width of 14 mm and a height of 10 mm. Thus, it takes only 1/100 the volume of the brain cavity in the skulls, the remaining space is filled with a fat-like substance. Morphologically similar to some parts of the brain where the cartilaginous fish, others where the lungfish and the Actinopterygii. Similarities to amphibians brains do not show up.

Species

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