Ichthyological palaeontology, the study of fossilised fish, on immediate consideration seems an unlikely point of departure for a work of popular non-fiction. However, the genre of elegant small-format books on abstruse scientific subjects continues to flourish. Perhaps we should thank Stephen Hawking for this publishing phenomenon.
Here is a smoothly digestible book about the coelacanth (pronounced seelakanth), a fish first discovered in 300-to-400-million-year-old fossils and believed to be the pioneer that clambered ashore on rudimentary legs - fins that served as legs - and started the evolutionary chain of land creatures, reptiles and mammals, which eventually begot us, lucky Homo sapiens.
The coelacanths on land, having performed their biological function, became extinct with the dinosaurs 70 million years ago. But not all coelacanths were sufficiently ambitious to leave their original element. Some prudently stayed in the sea. Their descendants still live there.
The first recognised survivor of the species was trawled from 40 fathoms down in the Indian Ocean, off the south coast of South Africa, in 1938. Captain Hendrik Goosen, master of the trawler Nerine, arrived at the docks of East London on December 22nd of that year, a momentous date in icthyological history. As usual, he notified Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator of the East London Museum, of his arrival, and invited her to inspect his mixed catch to see if it included anything that might interest her.
She was an ardent amateur ichthyologist then, and at the age of 91, when Samantha Weinberg was doing her research, still was. Appropriately enough, Miss Courtenay-Latimer was born under the astrological sign of Pisces, the Fishes. On the deck of the Nerine she found a pile of sharks, seaweed, starfish, sponges, rat-tail fishes, "all kinds of things". And she noticed a blue fin.
Weinberg quotes the young curator's account of that moment of revelation: "I picked away the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was five-foot long, a pale, mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an irridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange little puppy-dog tail."
Dr J.L.B Smith, a chemistry lecturer at Rhodes University, another amateur ichthyologist, went to East London and identified the skin and bones of his friend's discovery as a coelacanth. He named it Latimeria chalumnae in her honour and predicted that it would cause "a great sensation in the Zoological world". He was right. His report in Nature, the authoritative British scientific journal, provided evidence for Darwinians in their controversy with creationists, and brought about a fiercely competitive international fishing frenzy.
Much of this interesting book is an account of the rivalry to collect specimens of "our oldest living ancestor". Widely distributed posters offered rewards. Fishermen in the Comoro Islands, at the head of the Mozambique Channel, were paid £100 a coelacanth - five years' individual earnings in the 1930s. The Comoros were a French colony at that time, yet Dr Smith was able to persuade Dr D.F. Malan, South Africa's fundamentalist Prime Minister, to send a South African Air Force plane to pick up a dead fish while the governor looked on. Other nations' costly expeditions collected coelacanths as far away as in the waters of Indonesia.
Samantha Weinberg manages to sustain a sense of excitement, at least her own, to the very end. There are maps and illustrations which, strange to say, show that the coelacanth is extraordinarily ugly. I suppose its beauty is in the eyes of the ichthyological palaeontologists.
Patrick Skene Catling is an author and critic