2.9" Cretaceous Crusher Fish (Coccodus) With 14 Shrimp - Lebanon

Cretaceous Crusher Fish (Coccodus) With Shrimp - Lebanon #202115

This is an 2.9" long Cretaceous crusher fish (Coccodus insignis) from Hjoula, Lebanon. It has small molariform teeth in it's mouth which would have allowed it to easily crush the shells of small mollusks and crustaceans that it found while searching the mud. These molariform teeth are beautifully preserved and can easily be seen in this specimen.

It is naturally associated with a partially exposed crab and 14 fossil shrimp (Carpopenaeus sp.) on an unbroken, 16 x 12" slab of limestone. These shrimp fossils can best be identified under short-wave ultraviolet light which reacts with the preserved exoskeletons.

Comes with a display stand.

The discovery of amazingly preserved marine fossils near Hjoula, 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 one of the quarries at Hjoula, Lebanon