3.8" Cretaceous Crusher Fish (Coccodus) - Hjoula, Lebanon

Cretaceous Crusher Fish (Coccodus) - Hjoula, Lebanon #201343

This is a 3.8" long Cretaceous crusher fish (Coccodus sp.) from Hjoula, Lebanon. It has small molariform teeth in its mouth which would have allowed it to easily crush the shells of small mollusks and crustaceans that it found while searching the mud. Some of these molariform teeth can easily be seen on this specimen. These fish are on the rarer side, and a specimen with teeth should not be passed up. The faint impression of an unidentified crustacean is situated near the mouth of the fish and a shrimp in fairly good condition appears on the edge of this specimen.

It comes with an acrylic 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