1.4" Fossil Pycnodont Fish Crushing Mouth Plate - Lebanon

Fossil Pycnodont Fish Crushing Mouth Plate - Lebanon #124014

This is a 1.4" wide pycnodont fish crushing mouth plate, collected from the Upper Cretaceous marine deposits near Hakel, Lebanon. Pycnodontiformes had a superficial resemblance to angelfish and had a mouthful of knobby teeth that they used to crush their food. The large structure located along one corner of the rock appears to be an underlying partial pycnodont fish fossil.

It comes with an acrylic display stand.

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