09/17/2025
🦈Lebanese Blonde"🦈
A closer view reveals the extraordinary preservation of this ancient and extinct nurse shark: vertebrae delicately arched, fins outlined in the limestone matrix, the ghost of cartilage rendered permanent by stone. This fossil was unearthed in the unique conditions of Hjoula, Lebanon—an prehistoric seabed where soft-bodies organisms were preserved with astonishing fidelity.
Hjoula is not only one of the most important marine fossil sites of the Cretaceous, it is also among the earliest documented in human history. The Greek historian and geographer Herodotus referred to fossil discoveries in Lebanon as early as the 4th century BCE, marking the region as one of the oldest known sources of fossil collecting. Since then, these limestones have continued to reveal entire marine ecosystems: sharks, rays, fish, and invertebrates, captured in lifelike clarity.
To observe or display a fossil from Hjoula is to connect both with the story of Earth and the story of humanity's earliest curiosity about deep time. This Cantioscyllium decipiens is at once a scientific specimen and a natural sculpture. An ancient life form, preserved with near-biological detail, and treasured for centuries.
Cantioscyllium decipiens | Hjoula, Lebanon | Cretaceous | 100 Million Years Old
✨Available for sale. DM or email me at: [email protected] for details.✨
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