Coccocephalus is an extinct genus of prehistoric freshwater and marine basal ray-finned fish from the Carboniferous to the early Permian period.

[1] The type species, C. wildi, lived during the Bashkirian age of the Pennsylvanian epoch in what is now Lancashire, United Kingdom.

[2] The type species was first described as Coccocephalus wildi in 1925 by David Meredith Seares Watson, but because Coccocephalus was thought to be preoccupied (for an extant hemipteran insect), both Gilbert Percy Whitley[3] and Errol White & James Alan Moy-Thomas[4] proposed a new genus name in 1940.

[8] In 2023, the type specimen of C. wildi was found to preserve the earliest example of fossilized brain and nerve tissue.

The exceptional preservation of this specimen likely occurred due to the individual being rapidly buried in a low-oxygen environment after death, preventing decomposition of the brain tissue.