Remember Lazarus? Jesus raised him up alive after he had been dead in the grave three days.
But in the scientific world, some animals have been raised from the dead after eons of time have gone by.
I’m talking about the Lazarus Taxon…or Lazarus Effect: species thought to be extinct, then found to still be in existence today.
In 1938, the curator from a South African museum, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, was checking out the catch of a local angler. Here’s what she found:
“I picked away at the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen,” she said. “It was five foot long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange puppy dog tail.”
She had discovered the most famous Lazarus taxon of all; the Coelacanth.
Here’s a great photo of the fossil, and the real thing…
Pretty amazing!
But there are more Lazarus taxon, a couple of which were discovered in unusual ways…
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Argentine Province of Salta.
