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Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer

Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was a South African museum curator who discovered the first living coelacanth in 1938. While inspecting a local trawler's catch in East London, she recognised the unusual blue fish and worked to preserve it despite having no specialised equipment. Her persistence led to the scientific identification of the species, which was named Latimeria chalumnae in her honour, and sparked a global revolution in the field of evolutionary biology.

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