"It meant that the maximum longevity of coelacanth was five times longer than previously thought, hence around a century." "We demonstrated that these circuli were actually annual growth marks, whereas the previously observed macro-circuli were not," Mahé said. The researchers used techniques like polarized light microscopy to focus on extremely small calcified structures on the fish scales, tinier circuli that were much harder to detect. The animals had been caught off the coats of Comoros between 19. In this work, Mahé and co-authors were able to utilize a large collection of 27 coelacanth specimens at the French National Museum of Natural History. Previous work has attempted to gauge the age of coelacanths using growth-ring-like structures called macro-circuli, but the results didn't make much sense - the estimate was only 20 years, which would've made these fish extremely fast growers, among other incongruities. "Our new age estimation allowed us to reappraise the coelacanth's body growth, which happens to be one of the slowest among marine fish of similar size, as well as other life history traits, showing that the coelacanth's life history is actually one of the slowest of all fish." "Our most important finding is that the coelacanth's age was underestimated by a factor of five," said Kélig Mahé of IFREMER Channel and North Sea Fisheries Research Unit in Boulogne-sur-mer, France. Incredibly, they aren't mature until about age 55 and their offspring gestate for five years! This report has been published in Current Biology. The work suggested that the biology and movement of these animals is a bit slow. In a new study, scientists were able to analyze several coelacanth specimens, one of which was estimated to be 84 years old at the time it died. Now researchers have found that these massive fish may be able to live for as long as one hundred years. But they are rare and at one point they were thought to be extinct. Coelacanths are humungous, ancient fish that were first discovered in 1938.
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