Dispute over a legendary fish
Holden, C.
Science 284(5411): 22-23
1999
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 10215525 Document Number: 502624
A dispute has erupted over the legendary coelacanth fish. In September 1997, Mark Erdmann of the University of California, Berkeley, spotted one of these huge lobe-finned fish in a fish market on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. This species, initially thought to have gone extinct some 80 million years ago, turned up almost 60 years ago off South Africa but was believed not to have survived anywhere else in the world. In July 1998, Erdmann found a live specimen, again in Indonesia, and donated some tissue samples to the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) in Cibinong. Laurent Pouyaud, a geneticist at the French Institute for Developmental Research in Jakarta, and colleagues at LIPI published findings suggesting the specimen to be a separate species to the African coelacanth. Erdmann is outraged at the preemptive publishing.