Rare Green River Fossil Fish Notogoneus osculus

Description: This 50 million year old, Eocene-Era fossil fish comes from one of the world's famous Laggerstatten, the Green River Formation in Wyoming. A small portion of the fish fossils from Green River exhibits such fine preservation. The significant extent of soft-tissue preservation that makes the site famous is evident in this specimen.

Genus Notogoneus is one of the more uncommon taxa offered from the Green River Formation, and with a maximum total length of 91 cm, one of the largest. The Gonorynchidae are a marine family of fishes commonly called “sand fish” which are found today in the near-shore regions of the Indo-Pacific.

This specimen comes from the so-called 18 inch layer noted for the fish coming out complete on one side of the matirx and exquisite soft-tissue preservation. The preservation here is particularly superb.

Fossil members of the family are found in North America, Europe, S.W. Asia, and Australia. The down-turned mouth is an indicator of its feeding habits: it most likely fed upon prey animals living on the lake bottom. Its scarcity is thought to be a result of the fact that the lake was thermally stratified most of the time, rendering the bottom anoxic, and thus uninhabitable for most of the year. The Notogoneus is thought to have migrated into the lake to feed only during the season of annual turnover when the lake bottom would have been non-toxic.

About the Green River Formation: Class Actinopterygii, the ray-finned bony fishes, comprise almost half of all known species of vertebrates, some 20,000 extant species. There are numerous locations worldwide that are noted for wondrous preservation of bony fishes, and the Green River formation that covers some 25,000 square miles of SW Wyoming, west Colorado and east Utah is one of the premier examples. The formation is one of the largest lacustrine sedimentary accumulations in the world, and spans the period from 40 to 50 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch.

During the Eocene, based on the fossil record, the region was sub-tropical to temperate. Some 60 vertebrate taxa have been described from the formation, including crocodiles, boa constrictors, and birds, as well as abundant invertebrates and plants. The unusually excellent preservation of the Green River fish fossils is usually attributed to a combination of two factors: 1) a cold period during the Eocene that would have caused dead fish to sink faster due to a less inflated swim bladder; and 2) the great depth of the lakes and the consequent anoxic conditions that would have often prevented scavengers from disturbing the carcasses.