FOSSIL STINGRAY. ...

Description

FOSSIL STINGRAY
Cyclobatis sp.
Upper Cretaceous (+/- 100 million years ago)
Haqil, Byblos, Lebanon
One of the world's richest assemblages of ancient flora and fauna can be found in the ancient land of what we now know as Lebanon. From the fossil deposits at Haqil, Hgula, En Nammoura and Sahel Alma over 500 species of fish, octopus, crustaceans, sea urchins, worms, insects, plants, and even turtles and other reptiles have been found and described. The earliest written scientific descriptions of the fossil fish from this area date to 1708 - and scientists have flocked to the region ever since. The very fine-grained sedimentary deposits have yielded a seemingly unending supply of beautifully preserved fossils: of unparalleled variety. It takes painstaking work to unearth these fossils: the limestone beds have to be literally disassembled layer by layer, using hand tools, just to determine if there is a fossil trapped within the layers. Most of the fossils found are incomplete or in pieces - only a rare percentage are discovered intact enough to warrant the painstaking work of excavation and preservation. The predominant fossils from these quarries are fossil fish and only a very few are like the fossil stingray presented here. Fossil stingrays are rare - they're soft-bodied organism that don't preserve well, but there are always exceptions to the rule...
This fossil stingray is that exception - it's in a beautiful state of preservation displaying a barbed tail with visible three-dimensionally. Even the tiny teeth with smooth crowns can be seen. The stingray itself measures 4 ¾ inches from tip to tail and 3 ½ inches across the "wings" on a limestone matrix, 12 x 11 x ½ inches.


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