{"product_id":"9780060932855","title":"Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth","description":"\u003cp\u003eJust before Christmas in 1938, the young woman curator of a small South  African museum spotted a strange-looking fish on a trawler's deck. It was  five feet long, with steel-blue scales, luminescent eyes and remarkable  limb-like fins, unlike those of any fish she had ever seen. Determined to  preserve her unusual find, she searched for days for a way to save it, but  ended up with only the skin and a few bones.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e  A charismatic amateur ichthyologist, J.L.B. Smith, saw a thumbnail sketch of  the fish and was thunderstruck. He recognized it as a coelacanth (pronounced  see-la-kanth), a creature known from fossils dating back 400 million years  and thought to have died out with the dinosaurs. With its extraordinary  limbs, the coelacanth was believed to be the first fish to crawl from the  sea and evolve into reptiles, mammals and eventually mankind. The discovery  was immediately dubbed the \"greatest scientific find of the century.\"   \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e  Smith devoted his life to the search for a complete specimen, a  fourteen-year odyssey that culminated in a dramatic act of international  piracy. As the fame of the coelacanth spread, so did rumors and obsessions.  Nations fought over it, multimillion-dollar expeditions were launched, and  submarines hand-built to find it. In 1998, the rumors and the truth came  together in a gripping climax, which brought the coelacanth back into the  international limelight.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e  \u003ci\u003eA Fish Caught in Time\u003c\/i\u003e is the entrancing story of the most rare and precious fish in the world--our own great uncle forty million times removed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSamantha Weinberg is a British writer and traveler. She has reported from  the four corners of the world for American, African, and European newspapers  and magazines. She divides her time between her suitcase and a thatched  cottage in Wiltshire, England.  \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HarperCollins Publishers","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47015419576560,"sku":"9780060932855","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780060932855_p0.jpg?v=1763620842","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780060932855","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}