During the Cretaceous, planet Earth appeared vastly different from the world we know today. 90 million years ago, in the area that is now northern Lebanon, a coastal sea was home to a robust ecosystem of prehistoric animals. Fish, turtles, lizards, cephalopods, and even pterodactyls.

The Sannine Formation is an incredible snapshot of this period of geologic history. The limestone deposit holds an astounding variety of fossils in great detail, many of which include soft body preservation. This makes it a rare resource for paleontologists to better understand prehistoric life.

These specimens are fossil fish from the Sannine Formation. The fish come in two sizes, small and large. Our small fossils measure 2-4" and include a variety of smaller fishes, while the large fossils measure between 3-5" and come from the Armigatus genus.

The fantastic detail on these fossils can show skeletal impressions, fins, and even scale patterns in some cases. Each fossil is a completely unique piece of the Cretaceous Period. They are great collector's items and awesome to hold in your hand.

Both sizes ship in a padded carton along with an acrylic display stand. An informational photo card that serves as certificate of authenticity is also included. More fossils from the Sannine Formation, like shrimp, brittle stars, and showcase items are available in the collection below!

The Sannine Formation is an expansive deposit of limestone in Lebanon that holds within it a bounty of fish from the Cenomanian Age, around 100 million years ago. These specimens have been known since ancient times and were first documented by Herodotus around 2,500 years ago.

Around 1250, during the Seventh Crusade, King Louis IX of France received a gift of a fossil fish, described as being “all stone, but nothing was missing its form, nor eyes nor bones or color or anything else that was not as true.” King Louis IX’s fossil fish was hardly unique—specimens from the Sannine Formation are prized for their level of preservation and abundance.

These specimens are fossil fish from the Sannine Formation, with our larger samples from the Armigatus genus. These small fish were widely distributed across the Tethys Ocean, with their earliest appearance in the fossil record dating to the region’s Cenomanian deposits. The fish can be identified by their oval or even heart-shaped scutes, natural body armor that protected them from predation.

These were not the only creatures in the Cretaceous seas here. Of the deposit’s many groups of aquatic animals, the pycnodonts are of particular note, an order of highly diversified bony fish that lived for 175 million years from the end of the Triassic to the Eocene Epoch.

They had a wide distribution across saltwater, freshwater, and brackish environments, using their flat, molariform teeth to grind through gastropods and crustaceans. Pycnodonts peaked during the Cenomanian Age and are abundant in Lebanon’s Sannine Formation.

The Sannine Formation is considered a lagerstätte, a deposit with an exceptional degree of preservation of the marine life of the Tethys Ocean between Laurasia and Gondwana. A 2010 study uncovered a pterosaur Microtuban altivolans dating to the Cenomanian, the most complete pterosaur find from the African tectonic plate.

Even after hundreds of years of exploration, the Sannine Formation and the rest of Lebanon’s fossil deposits are still yielding up new finds for paleontologists.