Paris

The hunt is on for the explanation of an apparently faked photograph of a coelacanth. The picture is alleged to be of the fish that French researchers say was discovered in Southwest Java in 1995 — three years before the first official recording of such a ‘living fossil’ in Indonesia by US researchers (see Nature 406, 114; 2000).

Two authors of a recent submission to Nature describing the French discovery are claiming innocence and pointing the finger at the third, while admitting that even he may have been duped. But he is also denying any wrong-doing. And the French Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), for whom all three have worked, has launched an investigation.

The submitted photograph appears to show a coelacanth lying next to three other fish typical of the region. But the image of the coelacanth is identical to a photograph taken by Mark Erdmann of the University of California at Berkeley (see Nature 395, 335; 1998).

One of the three authors of the French paper, Georges Serre, a former consultant for IRD's predecessor, ORSTROM, claims to have found the coelacanth in 1995. He says that the specimen he caught was lost on its way to the Indonesian fishery service, and that the photos he took of the fish were stolen.

The two other authors, Bernard Séret, an ichthyologist affiliated with the IRD, and Laurent Pouyaud, an IRD geneticist who works in Jakarta, both claim that Serre either doctored the photo or knew that it was a fake, although Pouyaud also accepts that Serre may have been “manipulated”.

Séret sent the photo to an independent expert affiliated with the Tribunal de Paris who asserted that it was a forgery. But Serre — who has told Séret that the photo submitted to Nature was taken by a friend who has since died — said last week that he is not yet convinced that the photo is a fake and wants a separate investigation.

Pouyaud also says that he has come across a preserved coelacanth in a private collection near Jakarta, whose owner claims that the fish originated in Java. As it was roughly the same size as the coelacanth that Serre reportedly found, he concluded that it was the same fish.