Australian lungfish
Neoceratodus forsteri
— Where the name comes from
Neoceratodus is “new horned tooth”, from kéras and odoús: Ceratodus was the fossil genus to which this fish’s plate-like teeth were assigned before anyone discovered the animal was still alive, and the “neo” was added to separate the living one from its Triassic ancestors. Forsteri recalls William Forster, the Australian politician who sent in the first specimens.
— Facts
- Group
- Fish · Actinopterygii · Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Australian lungfish
- Habitat
- Slow deep rivers with vegetation, in Queensland
- Range
- Eastern Australia, the Burnett and Mary rivers
- Size
- 100–150 cm, 20–40 kg
- Diet
- Molluscs, shrimp, worms, fallen leaves and fruit
- Lifespan
- over 50 years, some perhaps 100
— Characteristics
- 01
It has a single lung, not two like its African and South American relatives.
- 02
It does not aestivate: if the water goes, it dies.
- 03
It swims slowly and walks along the bottom propped on its fleshy fins.
— What sets it apart
In 2021 its genome was sequenced and proved the largest ever read in an animal: forty-three billion letters, fourteen times ours, inflated by repeated sequences accumulated over hundreds of millions of years with nothing to clear them out. Inside that genome sit the genes that in amphibians govern the making of limbs and lungs: the toolkit for leaving the water was ready long before anybody used it.
