Laccognathus
Laccognathus is an extinct genus of amphibious lobe-finned fish from Europe and North America. They existed from the Middle Devonian to the Late Devonian. The name comes from Greek for 'pitted jaw'.

Obsidian Soul Background from File:Sea floor, sea depth.jpg , by Dimitris Siskopoulos · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- HoloptychiidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Time the record covers
At least 1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 383.4 Mya to 382.31 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 387.95 Mya to 372.15 Mya.
8 occurrences of Laccognathus on record, most of them in the Devonian. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
8 occurrences- Devonian100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
6 formations
- Gauja Formation2
- Burtnieki Formation1
- Polotsk Formation1
- Fram Formation1
- Tsilemskaya Formation1
- Yam-Tesovo Formation1
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The named rock units Laccognathus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Laccognathus and its relatives
DevonianWhere Laccognathus and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
85 taxa- Devononchus concinnus4 sites
- Glyptolepis4 sites
- Plourdosteus livonicus3 sites
- Acanthodes2 sites
- Asterolepis ornata2 sites
- Asterolepis radiata2 sites
- Cheirolepis gaugeri2 sites
- Chondrichthyes2 sites
- Dipnoi2 sites
- Glyptolepis baltica2 sites
- Haplacanthus2 sites
- Haplacanthus ehrmanensis2 sites
- Onychodus2 sites
- Panderichthys2 sites
- Panderichthys rhombolepis2 sites
- Plourdosteus panderi2 sites
- Psammosteus praecursor2 sites
- Actinolepis magna1 site
- Actinopterygii1 site
- Asterolepis1 site
- Asterolepis alticristata1 site
- Asterolepis essica1 site
- Asterolepis syasiensis1 site
- Atopacanthus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Laccognathus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
6 references- The Middle Devonian fishes of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia) and Belarus3
- New tetrapodomorph vertebrates from the Yam-Tesovo locality (Amata Regional Stage, Middle–Upper Devonian) of Leningrad Region, northwestern Russia1
- A new species of Laccognathus (Sarcopterygii, Porolepiformes) from the Late Devonian of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada1
- End-Devonian extinction and a bottleneck in the early evolution of modern jawed vertebrates1
- Psammosteiforms (Agnatha, Heterostraci) from the Lower Frasnian of the Mikhailovskii Mine, Kursk Region, Russia1
- A new genus of arthrodires from the Upper Devonian of Timan1
Each of the 8 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Laccognathus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Obsidian Soul Background from File:Sea floor, sea depth.jpg , by Dimitris Siskopoulos
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Photogrammetry
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Laccognathus embryi · CMN:NUFV:656
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itHoloptychiidae through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gross 1941