7.4" Cretaceous Fish (Halec) With Shrimp Fossils - Hjoula, Lebanon

Cretaceous Fish (Halec) With Shrimp Fossils - Hjoula, Lebanon #202164

This is a 7.4" long example of the rare fish Halec sp. that preserved in association with three shrimp (Carpopenaeus callirostris). The plate was collected from the Upper Cretaceous Lebonese lagerstätten near Hjoula, Lebanon, making these fossils approximately 98 million years old. They are preserved on a beige limestone which has been stabilized across its back side to ensure structural integrity of the specimen.

There is a repaired crack through the middle of the rock/fish fossil. 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