Ancient Coelacanths: Coelacanthus banffensis and Whitea sp.

Amazing Story!

The group of fishes known as the coelacanths have a long and well-known fossil record, dating from the Middle Devonian, or 360 million years ago, to the Upper Cretaceous, about 80 million years ago, when they were assumed to have become extinct. Extinct, that is, until 1938 when a living coelacanth was trawled off the southeast coast of South Africa.

Of the roughly 80 species of fossil coelacanths known from around the world, three species are known from Canada. The Canadian Museum of Nature has specimens of two of the species from this country, including one holotype, of Coelacanthus banffensis. (A holotype is the specimen upon which a species description is based.) This specimen consists only of a pectoral fin and scales. It was collected near Massive, Alberta, about 16 km west of Banff.

The other, named only to genus (Whiteia), is represented by a few specimens, including a rare specimen (shown) of fossil impressions of both sides of one fish. Another was collected in 1961 from the area near Wapiti Lake, in British Columbia, about 150 kilometres northeast of Prince George. Whiteia occurred in the same relatively deep water, open-shelf environment as the living coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae.

Both these coelacanth species are from the Early Triassic period, or about 240 million years ago. Coelacanths are believed to have reached the peak of their diversity some 80 million years earlier, during the Carboniferous period, when they occupied many kinds of aquatic environments. Both the species represented in the Canadian Museum of Nature collection were marine, or salt water animals, as are most known fossil coelacanth species.