Coccocephalus
Coccocephalus is an extinct genus of prehistoric freshwater and marine basal ray-finned fish from the Carboniferous to the early Permian period. The type species, C. wildi, lived during the Bashkirian age of the Pennsylvanian epoch in what is now Lancashire, United Kingdom. One specimen of C. wildi is notable for having the earliest known instance of fossilized brain tissue in a vertebrate.
Taxonomy
The type species was first described as Coccocephalus wildi in 1925 by David Meredith Seares Watson, but because Coccocephalus was thought to be preoccupied, both Gilbert Percy Whitley and Errol White & James Alan Moy-Thomas proposed a new genus name in 1940. Because the article introducing the name Coccocephalichthys Whitley, 1940 was published before the article erecting the name Cocconiscus White & Moy-Thomas, 1940, the former became the valid new genus name for the Carboniferous fish for some time. However, reexamination of Fieber's 1861 insect publication in 1996 revealed that the insect in question is Coccodocephalus, thus the original name Coccocephalus wildi stands as the correct name for this genus and both Coccocephalichthys and Cocconiscus are junior synonyms.- Family †Coccocephalichthyidae Fowler, 1951
- * Genus †Coccocephalus Watson 1925
- ** †C. baldwini - latest Carboniferous of Kansas, USA, marine
- ** †C. tessellatus Beltan, 1981 - Early Permian of Uruguay, marine
- ** †C. wildi Watson, 1925 - Late Carboniferous of England, freshwater