28" Wide, Fossil Fish Plate Featuring Baby Stingray - Wyoming

This is a beautiful, 28" wide fossil fish "mural" featuring a small, baby stingray (Heliobatis radians). The fossil stingray is very detailed, 5.4" long and has been inlaid into a piece of rock which has eight other fossil fish, seven Knightia eocaena and one Diplomystus dentatus. Other than the inlaid ray, there is a repaired crack running through the center of the rock.

It a very displayable piece that would look great either hanging on a wall or on the included display stand. The rock has been backed for stability and we can install a wall hanger upon request.

Heliobatis is an extinct genus of freshwater ray primarily known from the Green River Formation in Wyoming. The teeth are triangular and shaped for feeding on small fish, crustaceans, and mollusks.

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.
A view of one of the commercial quarries where fossils from the Green River Formation are collected.
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DETAILS
SPECIES
Heliobatis radians, Knightia eocaena & Diplomystus dentatus
LOCATION
Kemmerer, Wyoming
FORMATION
Green River Formation
SIZE
Rock 28 x 13", Ray 5.4"
CATEGORY
ITEM
#172199
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