A cryptozoologist has suggested that the fish called “Coelacanth” is not an ancient fish.
To be enlightened by the lowly Coelacanth, look not at the anatomy of fishes but at the mentality of humans. What is to be learned from a fish that is labeled a “living fossil?” It’s a lesson from the mistakes of biology textbooks written long before the 1938 discovery of the Coelacanth, and those mistakes are far more significant than is commonly known.
Consider the mistake about “limb-like” fins. They were supposed to have gradually evolved into legs many millions of years ago. Since 1938, we’ve learned that the rather strange configuration and shape of the fins allow this fish to swim backwards and upside down. The usefulness of the fins is in swimming, not in evolving into reptile or mammal legs.
In other words, the nineteenth-century idea that the Coelacanth was an ancient fish came from an assumption about the General Theory of Evolution. That original idea has now been discounted: Strange fins do not necessarily evolve into legs.