17" Framed Display With Four Fossil Fish - Wyoming

Framed Display With Four Fossil Fish - Wyoming #143993

This is a beuatiful, framed display featuring four fossil fish from the Green River Formation of Wyoming. The entire frame is 17 x 17" and the largest fossil fish is 4.7" long. There are three Knightia eocaena and one Diplomystus dentatus featured in the frame. All of the fish have excellent preservation and were collection from a quarry near Kemmerer, WY.

50 million years ago, in the Eocene, these fish thrived in Fossil Lake, which was fed by the Uinta and Rocky Mountain highlands. The anoxic conditions at the bottom of Fossil Lake slowed bacterial decomposition, prevented scavengers from disturbing corpses and, most interestingly, suffocated creatures that ventured into the oxygen-starved aquatic layer. The result is a miraculous exhibition of Eocene biota: a subtropical aquatic community within sycamore forests, teeming with creatures such as freshwater stingrays, dog-sized horses, menacing alligators, early flying bats, and one of the first primates.

A view of one of the commercial quarries where fossils from the Green River Formation are collected.