Q: CAN you give me some information on the dinosaur fish that was discovered a few years ago? I cannot remember its name, but I believe it is human-sized and was thought to be extinct. - C Parker, Peterlee.

A: THE creature is called a coelacanth and, although described as an ancient form of fish, is, in fact, more closely related to land animals. Coelacanths look like fish and are about 5ft in length but their fins are arm-like with jointed bones. They appeared on earth around 350 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs. The creature was thought to have died out 70 million years ago.

However, on December 23, 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a museum curator in the South African port of East London, discovered a coelacanth in the nets of a local fisherman. She took the coelacanth to her museum but the internal organs could not be preserved and were disposed of by the time she received the advice of Prof JLB Smith, a noted fish expert, who worked 50 miles away.

The internal organs were crucial to the study of the creature and Prof Smith devoted much time to finding a second specimen off the African coast. He would have to wait 14 years.

On December 21, 1952, two fishermen on the Comoros Islands, near Madagascar, produced a specimen coelacanth and it became apparent that the islanders caught several of these creatures each year and knew them as gombessa.

Smith flew to the Comoros to collect the specimen and returned it to South Africa for study. From 1952 to 1997 several examples of coelacanths were observed in and around the Comoros. Live specimens were filmed or observed at depths of only 180 metres, reputedly in their natural habitat, but these were dismissed as catches that had been re-released. It was only in the 1980s that it was realised that coelacanths did not inhabit the sea at the great depths, as had been presumed.

The next major discovery came in 1997 when a coelacanth population was discovered thousands of miles away from Africa, off the coast of North Sulawesi in Indonesesia. The Indonesian coelacanth was brown with golden speckles, rather than blue and silver like its Comoron counterparts. These coelacanth were later identified by DNA analysis as a separate species. Over 200 individual examples of coelacanth have now been spotted since the 1938 discovery and last year a new population was reported off Madagascar.

Q: Could you tell me anything about the Lorelei Rock and the legend of the Lorelei Maiden on the River Rhine in Germany?- WE Wade, Durham.

A: THE Lorelei Rock is a 430ft high cliff-face that rises above the River Rhine near the town of Sankt Goar in West Germany. This section of the river is difficult to navigate and may have given rise to the legend perpetuated by the German writer Clemens Bretano about a beautiful siren who sits on the rock and entices boatmen towards her. The boats usually crash into the rocks.

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Published: Monday, April 16, 2001