The capture of a ‘living fossil’ fish off the coast of South Africa in the 1930s is now helping us understand one of the more exotic ways evolution can happen — interspecies genetic hijacking. A model of Latimeria chalumnae, one of two known species of coelacanths. Image via Wikipedia. Coelacanths are one of the oldest lineages of fish in existence today. They’re so old, in fact, that they’re more closely related to the ancestors of reptiles and amphibians than modern-day fish. We first encountered them as fossils from the Late Cretaceous (some 66 million years old), and naturally assumed they must’ve died off by now. However, the capture of a live African Coelacanth (