KNYSNA NEWS - One of South Africa’s greatest science stories will be turning 80 years old this Saturday 22 December.

It was on this day in 1938 that Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, the young curator of the East London Museum (and, for many years, one half of its entire staff of two) saw and collected a strange fish from a pile of "unusable" catches that Captain Goosen, of the 115-foot fishing trawler Nerine, had brought back from his latest expedition.

Puzzled and intrigued, Ms (later Dr) Courtenay-Latimer wrote to the honorary curator of fishes at the museum, the chemist and ichthyologist JLB Smith, who happened to be on holiday here in Knysna.

"I had the most queer-looking specimen brought to notice yesterday. The captain of the trawler told me about it so I immediately set off to see the specimen which I had removed to our taxidermist as soon as I could. I however have drawn a very rough sketch, and am in hopes that you may be able to assist me in classing it.

"It was trawled off the Chalumna coast at about 40 fathoms (about 73m depth).

"It is coated in heavy scales, almost armour-like, the fins resemble limbs, and are scaled right up to a fringe of filament. The spinous dorsal has tiny white spines down each filament," Courtenay-Latimer wrote.

Six weeks would pass before Smith would finally see the fish, which he later identified as a coelacanth – a species that everyone had thought had disappeared during the sudden mass-extinction event that marked the end of the Cretaceous period, around 65-million years ago.

Smith told the dramatic story of the discovery of the first, and the 14-year hunt for the second specimen in his best-selling book Old Four Legs, which Struik Nature recently republished as The Annotated Old Four Legs, with annotations by Mike Bruton – the driving force behind the Knysna Museum’s Angling Museum, with its display about the history of the coelacanth.

So, if your Christmas shopping gets you down this week, pop into the Knysna Museum’s Old Gaol (corner Queen and Main streets), and spend some time wishing the old chap a very happy birthday – and congratulating Dr Latimer on her incredibly astute find.

You can also visit them on www.knysnamuseums.co.za

The coelacanth display found at the Old Gaol. Photo: Martin Hatchuel'We bring you the latest Knysna, Garden Route news'