This is a coelacanth. The drawing is made by Null on the Melonland forums.
The coelacanth is an ancient lobe-finned fish that first evolved in the early Devonian along with many other fish. They are older than dinosaurs. Notice on the picture how the fins aren't attached directly to the body, like with most modern fish. These used to be common. Fun fact, our ancestor was a lobe-finned fish that learned to crawl between bodies of water.
The coelacanth disappeared from the fossil record 66 million years ago, at the same time when the asteroid that killed the non-avian dinosaurs hit the earth. The non-avian dinosaurs are the most famous group to go extinct, but they weren't the only ones. 75% of species on earth went extinct, making this one of the mass extinctions.
Then in 1938, a living coelacanth was fished up in South Africa. So they were not quite extinct.
Yesterday I was thinking about how the coelacanth would be the perfect symbol for the indie web. It was commonly thought to have disappeared when social media got big, but it's been here the whole time. And people who are too young to remember the time before social media are finding it. When I first discovered web revival I thought that everyone here would be at least 30 years old. I'm happy to say that I was wrong.
