Five Cretaceous Fossil Fish & Shrimp - Hakel, Lebanon

This is an association of five small fossil fish and a shrimp fossil from the Upper Cretaceous marine deposits near Hakel, Lebanon. The too larger fish appear to be Armigatus, but I can't positively ID the smaller fish and shrimp. It comes with an acrylic display stand.

Armigatus is the most common fossil fish from the deposits of Lebanon. It was a fairly small schooling fish, averaging about 2 inches in length. It was originally described as Clupea, then as a species of Diplomystus before it's current name of Armigatus.

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