Fearsome, 4.1" Fossil Fish Jaw - Kem Kem Beds, Morocco

This is a fearsome looking, and spectacularly well preserved fossil fish jaw from the Kem Kem Beds of Morocco. The jaw itself is 4.1" in length and it's still embedded in the sandstone matrix in which it was found. The fossil has been bleached white due to exposure. There is some stabilization to the matrix around the jaw but no restoration or repair otherwise. The stabilization with glue around the teeth is the reason the matrix appears more reddish in color around them.

I've tentatively ID'd it as a jaw of Aidachar pankowskii an ichthyodectiform teleost ray-finned fish. There teeth from this same location often get confused for those of Pterosaurs.

Taxonomic Composition and Trophic Structure of the Continental Bony Fish Assemblage from the Early Late Cretaceous of Southeastern Morocco

The Kem Kem Beds are famous for yielding a diverse, Late Cretaceous, vertebrate assemblage including fish, reptiles and dinosaurs such as Spinosaurus. These fossils are found in a thin bed that outcrops around the edge of a large plateau near Taouz, Morocco. Local miners collect these fossils by digging narrow tunnels by hand into this plateau following the layer.

A paper on this assemblage can be found at: Vertebrate assemblages from the early Late Cretaceous of southeastern Morocco: An overview