The cousin of the coelacanth, more ...

Scubapeople asks me for a photograph of this exceptional fish which will be talked about in all the oceans within a few weeks, by the time science journalists take hold of the case.

Scubapeople and its Internet users are therefore the first:

Scanning the article wouldn't work, but the words are often more evocative than the pictures:

First imagine the length, a 1,6 m critter… a 14 year old boy…

A fish whose nostrils (the lungs are already there) are on the top of the skull, a bit like crocodiles, with the same protruding protuberances, its muzzle is pointed. The body is oblong, much like the belly of a grouper after New Years Eve, except that from the belly come out four finned legs, I mean the humerus, radius and ulna bones are surrounded by scales and the hands and feet are webbed .

A very long tail, much like those of the fox sharks, except that the split is absent.

Mix everything with brackish water barely a few meters deep, surround its crawling cousins ​​on the mud, add algae and shells, drink a good pastis and you have in front of your mask Elpistostege watsoni “the old four legs” Ahhh if JLB Smith was still alive ...

The 380-million-year-old fossil is for the moment 1 km from my apartment, well dry at the University of Quebec in Rimouski, it will soon be repatriated to its place of discovery in Miguasha as soon as the paleontologist Dr. Richard Cloutier and his assistant will have published the article in the journal Nature.

Thank you for taking the time to say it, to read this post as sweet as the sea.

Marcolepoulpe des Neiges