''Luckeus'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

of prehistoric lobe-finned fish. ''Luckeus'' belonged to the group of onychodontid fishes. It lived during the Early Devonian to Middle Devonian period ( Emsian to Eifelian

faunal stages In chronostratigraphy, a stage is a succession of rock strata laid down in a single age on the geologic timescale, which usually represents millions of years of deposition. A given stage of rock and the corresponding age of time will by conventi ...

) in central

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Description

''Luckeus'' is only known by a left lower jaw, which is the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

(

ANU Anu ( akk, , from wikt:𒀭#Sumerian, 𒀭 ''an'' “Sky”, “Heaven”) or Anum, originally An ( sux, ), was the sky father, divine personification of the sky, king of the gods, and ancestor of many of the list of Mesopotamian deities, dei ...

V2969) of the genus, and also by some isolated teeth (ANU V3108-3112). Before palaeontologists establish a genus name for these remains, they referred to them as "onychodontid" and "crossopterygian" remains, or more specific as "onychodontid teeth remains". In 2005, palaeontologists

Gavin Young Gavin David Young (24 April 1928 – 18 January 2001) was a journalist and travel writer. He was born in Bude, Cornwall, England. His father, Gavin Young, was a lieutenant colonel in the Welsh Guards. Daphne, his mother, was the daughter of Sir ...

and

Hans-Peter Schultze Hans-Peter Schultze (born 13 August 1937 in Swinemünde, Poland) is a German-American paleoichthyologist.Lebensdaten nach ''American Men and Women of Science'', Thomson Gale 2004 He has described the following taxon: *'' Luckeus abudda'' Young ...

described these findings and assigned them to a new genus under the name ''Luckeus''. Young and Schultze named ''Luckeus'' after the nickname "Lucke" of the late palaeontologist Dr. Hans Ludolph Jessen due to his major study of

Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ' ...

bony fish. The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

, ''Luckeus abudda'', named after the Abudda Lakes located in the Simpson Desert, about 15 kilometers of the fossil Mereenie Sandstone.

References

* Onychodontida Prehistoric lobe-finned fish genera Devonian bony fish Prehistoric fish of Australia {{paleo-lobefinned-fish-stub