Laugiidae

Laugiidae
Temporal range: Early Triassic to Late Jurassic
Coccoderma bavaricum
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Sarcopterygii
Class: Actinistia
Family: Laugiidae
Stensiö, 1932
Genera

Laugiidae is an extinct family of prehistoric marine coelacanths which lived during the Triassic and Jurassic periods.[1] Their fossils have been found in Canada, Germany and Greenland.[2]

They are notable for the extreme temporal disjunction seen between genera; two genera, Laugia and Belemnocerca, are known from the Early Triassic, and another (Coccoderma) is known from the Late Jurassic, leaving a ghost lineage spanning 100 million years between these two time periods. The presence of Coccoderma in the Late Jurassic makes Laugiidae the latest surviving non-latimerioid coelacanth lineage; almost all other non-latimerioid coelacanths were extinct by the Carnian stage of the Late Triassic, leaving only the latimerioids (Latimeriidae and Mawsoniidae) as the dominant coelacanth groups. It has been estimated that the laugiids diverged from the latimerioids & allied taxa (such as the Whiteiidae) during the Early Permian.[3]

  1. ^ "PBDB Taxon". paleobiodb.org. Retrieved 2024-05-22.
  2. ^ Wendruff, A.J.; Wilson, M.V. (2013). "New Early Triassic coelacanth in the family Laugiidae (Sarcopterygii: Actinistia) from the Sulphur Mountain Formation near Wapiti Lake, British Columbia, Canada". Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. 50 (9): 904–910. Bibcode:2013CaJES..50..904W. doi:10.1139/cjes-2013-0010.
  3. ^ Toriño, Pablo; Soto, Matías; Perea, Daniel (2021-12-02). "A comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of coelacanth fishes (Sarcopterygii, Actinistia) with comments on the composition of the Mawsoniidae and Latimeriidae: evaluating old and new methodological challenges and constraints". Historical Biology. 33 (12): 3423–3443. doi:10.1080/08912963.2020.1867982. ISSN 0891-2963.