Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Coelacanth
/ˈsiːləkænθ/noun
A lobe-finned fish known from fossils and, since 1938, from living animals off East Africa and Indonesia.
The Greek roots
κοῖλος
koîlos
hollow
ἄκανθα
ákantha
spine, thorn
Literally: “hollow spine”
The story of the word
Louis Agassiz named the fossil genus in 1839 for the hollow rays in its fin spines, and the group was assumed to have died out with the last dinosaurs. In December 1938 Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a museum curator in East London, South Africa, pulled a heavy blue fish from a trawler's catch and could not place it; J. L. B. Smith identified it, and the surviving genus Latimeria carries her name. Ákantha is also the plant curling round the top of a Corinthian column.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
acanthuscoeliaccoelompyracantha
In a sentence
Coelacanths give birth to live young and can live for decades in deep volcanic caves.