you have this mysterious fish that  no one really cared about, because everyone assumed theyâd gone extinct with the dinosaurs. an interesting footnote, but one of many, many fossil species.Â
and later the coelacanth gets some fame as a so-called âmissing linkâ species, a theory which is now outdated (and not accurate for coelacanths) but was really influential at the time. because they have some weird biological quirks â bones in fins! â people were like âoh, they must be a missing link.â so the coelacanth was launched into some fame with the theory of evolution. it got brought up a lot. drawn in old textbooks as proof.
and then a fisherman finds a weird fish off the coast of south africa and calls a local fish expert who had let it be known she was interested in weird finds, and he brings her the (unfortunately badly rotted) corpse and sheâs like âwell, this is sure weird,â and sends off the bones to other experts, who start to quietly freak out, and rush to south africa, and rewards are offered for another one, any other one, and a few years later one is caught and frozen before rotting.
and itâs this incredible discovery, this extinct creature come to life (the prehistoric coelacanth lived in swamps and marshes in south america; these now are deep ocean fish in and around the indian ocean, but itâs still recognizably the same species)!
not like, muddy blue, or tumblr-default-background blue.
proper shimmering sapphire blue and white. almost turquoise in some lights. this like⊠muddy, fossil creature. always drawn in dinosaur browns and grays. and itâs alive and itâs blue. just imagine being the scientist who opened that crate to this creature for the first time. youâre already excited, youâve known about this fish for decades, you thought it was a story, you know itâs in this box. you expect  to see the weird fins and the strange tail. you know itâs large and odd looking. and you open it up and itâs this beautiful, shining blue, you know?
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