Laugiidae

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

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.