1.4" Cretaceous Fossil Fish (Aipichthys) Pos/Neg - Lebanon

Cretaceous Fossil Fish (Aipichthys) Pos/Neg - Lebanon #173160

This is an nicely preserved, 1.4" wide fossil fish of the genus Aipichthys, collected from the Upper Cretaceous marine deposits near Hakel, Lebanon. The rock split perfectly during collection, resulting in this beautiful positive/negative specimen. Both halves of this split are included.

Aipichthys was a small, very flat fish whose body was almost as high as it was wide. Given the body shape Aipichthys, certainly could not swim very fast, and would have wandered through the rocks on the sea floor. There are no living relatives to Aipichthys as the line died out in the Upper Cretaceous.

Comes with acrylic display stands.

The discovery of amazingly preserved marine fossils near Hakel, Lebanon dates back many centuries. In fact, they were first mentioned in writing by Herodotus, over 450 years before the birth of Christ. The first scientific work on these localities began in the 1800s: these deposits have been meticulously quarried by several Lebanese families for over a century. We purchase our specimens directly from one of these families.

These deposits represent a warm, shallow sea of the Middle Cretaceous, and have yielded over 70 types of fish and numerous other genera found nowhere else in the world. The preservation on many of these specimens is truly amazing: many examples of soft bodied preservation have been found.

A photo of the quarry at Hakel, Lebanon