Much like foreign tourists rushing to tick off the big five on their whistle-stop African Safari, it was almost as if the latest discovery of a coelacanth near Hibberdene late last year was a case of “been there, done that”.

After all, the first recorded coelacanth was found off the coast of East London in 1938. It was a discovery that animated the scientific community and large sections of the public.

And it made headlines across the world, because here was proof that a prehistoric “four-legged” fish, a 400-million-year-old creature that predated dinosaurs and was possibly a distant relative of early land animals, was still alive and had not become extinct...