‘Living Fossil’ Fish the Coelacanth Can Live for Up to a Century—New Study Discovers

Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images

A prehistoric fish called the coelacanth was once thought to have gone extinct along with the dinosaurs 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.

That notion was famously shattered in 1938 when a live coelacanth was dredged up in a fishing net off the east coast of South Africa, which garnered the coelacanth the moniker of being a “living fossil.”