A prehistoric fish called the coelacanth was once thought to have gone extinct along with the dinosaurs 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period. That notion was famously shattered in 1938 when a live coelacanth was dredged up in a fishing net off the east coast of South Africa, which garnered the coelacanth the moniker of being a “living fossil.” A recent discovery has shed new light on the coelacanth, suggesting that its lifespan far exceeds what scientists once thought. The fish was previously believed to have a lifespan of just 20 years. A French study published in journal Current Biology—which examined the scales of 27 coelacanth specimens from two museum collections, counting layers of growth deposits like “the rings of a tree”—determined that this ancient swimmer actually has a lifespan of about a century. This places the coelacanth alongside sharks in terms of pace of growth—as well as life …