The Mojo Fun Coelacanth model is in stock at Everything Dinosaur. This replica of a “living fossil” is an excellent example of a Coelacanth figure. Team members were keen to bring in this figure. It is a vivid blue colour and website sales of this model will be accompanied by an Everything Dinosaur Coelacanth fact sheet.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Coelacanth

Thought to have died out at around the same time as the non-avian dinosaurs. Naturalists and palaeontologists were shocked when a Coelacanth specimen was caught in a shark gill net at the mouth of the Chalumna River on the east coast of South Africa in 1938. Two living species are known Latimeria chalumnae from the Indian Ocean and Latimeria menadoensis, which is known from Indonesian waters. Although these fish are assigned to the same genus, an analysis of DNA suggests that the two populations have been separated from each other for several million years.

Mojo Fun Coelacanth Model

The Mojo Fun Coelacanth model depicts the rostral pores on the top the snout. These openings lead to a jelly filled cavity in the centre of the animal’s head. It is thought that this organ plays a role in prey detection by sensing the weak electrical signals produced by prey.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The Coelacanth has a remarkably small brain. A fish measuring around 1.5 metres long and weighing more than fifty kilograms may have a brain weighing only a few grammes. No known living vertebrate has so small a brain in relation to its body size.

To view the Mojo Fun model range: Mojo Fun Prehistoric and Extinct Model Range.