several members of our present staff are the intellectual 

 products of university-museum cooperation. These arrange- 

 ments, which had previously been formalized at the institu- 

 tional level, will be much more effectively implemented by 

 the availability of the special funds. 



The Center, because of its funds, will make it possible to 

 expand the Museum's professional training activities. Ex- 

 pansion is especially important in view of the shortage of 

 systematists. Tuition and fellowship funds for systematic 

 biologists have never been adequate on either an absolute 

 or a relative scale. The funds now available to the Center 

 for these purposes should help attract good students to this 

 area. It is not that students are more mercenary now than 

 they were. It simply costs a good deal more to go to grad- 

 uate school than it used to. Ask any parent. 



The establishment of the Center for Graduate Studies 

 as a formal administrative entity has another advantage 

 that, though difficult to measure, is significant. It will force 

 Museum staff and members of the faculties of the two uni- 

 versities to meet more often and talk about shared problems 

 and interests. In effect, we have here another manifestation 

 of the two-heads-are-better-than-one phenomenon. The 

 staffs should get together oftener. But biologists, like all 

 other people, get caught up in day-to-day affairs. The dia- 

 logue, which the Center will generate, will benefit each in- 

 stitution and thereby improve higher educational and scien- 

 tific activities in the Chicago area. 



Although at present only the University of Chicago and 

 Northwestern University are participating with the Mu- 

 seum in operating the Center, it is understood that other 

 Chicago-area universities may join in the near future. We 

 hope, for example, that the University of Illinois (Chicago 

 Circle) will become an active member of the Center after 

 the Circle Campus is authorized to award the Ph.D. degree 

 in appropriate areas of biology and geology. 



The pooling of resources on a regional basis, which is 

 what the Center signifies, is not only highly desirable but 

 absolutely essential. No city, state or nation is so rich in 

 scientific resources that it can afford to duplicate facilities 

 endlessly. The Center for Graduate Studies represents a 

 formal acknowledgment by these three institutions and the 

 National Science Foundation of this economic truth. 



The Center also represents the recognition by these in- 

 stitutions that systematic zoology and paleontology are 

 fields that have played and will continue to play impor- 

 tant roles in the history of science and human thought. 



recent acquisilion — zoology 



COELACANTH 



A THREE-FOOT-LONG fomialin-fixed specimen of the "liv- 

 ing fossil" Lalimeria chalumnae, caught on August 25, 1967 

 at a depth of about 1000 feet off the Comoro Islands near 

 Madagascar, has been added to the scientific collection 

 of the Museum through the courtesy of the Department 

 of Anatomy, University of Illinois College of Medicine. 



The coelacanths are members of the fringe-finned 

 fishes, the Crossopterygii, which made their first appear- 

 ance in the Devonian some 300 million years ago. 



One group of the Crossopterygii, the Rhipidistia, used 

 their limb-like fins and their ability to breathe air to 

 scramble ashore and move on land to fresh waters when 

 the pools they had lived in started to dry up. As they 

 became progressively better adapted to live on land, their 

 paired fins evolved into true legs. When this dramatic 

 evolutionary stage was reached they were no longer fish, 

 but the first primitive amphibians. 



The second air-breathing group among the fringe- 

 finned fishes, the lung-fishes (Dipnoi), did not evolve 

 further. Lung-fishes are still found in parts of Austra- 

 lia, Africa and South America. 



The third crossopterygian group, the coelacanths, are 

 related to our distant ancestors, the Rhipidistia, but they 

 have never been the direct line of evolution. However, 

 since the first coelacanths were related to the ancestral 

 line of all land vertebrates and since they have changed 

 so little in 275 million years, they may have preserved 

 some of the primitive features they shared with our far-off 

 ancestors. A careful study of Lalimeria may, therefore, 

 throw light on our very remote ancestry. Functional 

 anatomical studies by scientists of Field Museum and 

 the University of Illinois will be made on the endocrine 

 system, the respiratory apparatus, the brain tracts, the 

 reproductive apparatus and the sensory apparatus. 



— By Karel F. Liem, Assistant Curator, Vertebrate Anatomy 



FEBRUARY Page 3 



