Keith Stewart Thomson 
Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth 

’An engrossing tale of obsession, adventure and scientific reasoning.’ —Betty Ann Kevles, Los Angeles Times

In the winter of 1938, a fishing boat by chance dragged from the Indian Ocean a fish thought extinct for 70 million years. It was a coelacanth, which thrived concurrently with dinosaurs and pterodactyls—an animal of major importance to those who study the history of vertebrate life.




Living Fossil describes the life and habitat of the coelcanth and what scientists have learned about it during fifty years of research. It is an exciting and very human story, filled with ambitious and brilliant people, that reveals much about the practice of modern science.

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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.