It lived in the Late Devonian period, on what was once a 1,400-kilometre-long (870 mi; 760 nmi) coral reef off the Kimberley coast surrounding north-western Australia.

In 2005 Long led another expedition back to Gogo and on July 11 one of the team members, Dr Tim Senden from the Australian National University, found a very well-preserved skeleton of Gogonasus, containing almost the complete fish down to the tip of the tail.

Secondly, after preparation of its pectoral fins, the internal limb skeleton showed closer resemblances to that of the elpistostegalians than to other more generalised tetrapodomorph fishes like Eusthenopteron.

Gogonasus now replaces Eusthenopteron in being a better preserved representative without any ambiguity in interpreting its anatomy (as had been shown for example by Rosen et al. 1981 when erroneously reconstructing the fit of the lower jaws to the palate).

Superficially, Gogonasus appears similar to the generalised tetrapodomorph fishes like Osteolepis from Scotland, but in its advanced features shows that even primitive-looking cosmine-covered forms evolved significant specializations towards becoming tetrapod-like.