The University of Chicago has a post about a recent Green River find. A very interesting gar fish skull was found this summer by a high school student in Lance Grande's "Stones and Bones" program at the University of Chicago this last summer. The specimen comes from a fish estimated to be 8 feet long! It was prepared by ESCONI member Tony Bellos, who works as a fossil preparator at the Field Museum.
In the 16 years he’s led the program, Lance Grande of The Field Museum in Chicago has helped students make all sorts of discoveries in Wyoming’s Green River Formation. This 52-million-year-old site is one of the richest fossil localities in North America, and this summer, one of his students unearthed one of the program’s most remarkable fish finds.
In past years of the Stones and Bones program, a rare find might mean a four-foot-long turtle or a stingray skeleton, preserved for millions of years in ancient sediment. But this summer, a California high school student dug up something truly special: a perfect skull of a gar fish that would have been at least 8 feet long. The skull, has the outward appearance as that of a crocodile, contained hundreds of small teeth and rows of large fangs, enabling it to become one of the lake’s top predators.
“Every year we find many truly remarkable fossils, including species new to science or specimens like this indicating new information about the ancient ecosystem. All of what we find has not seen the light of day for 52 million years,” said Grande, the Negaunee Distinguished Service Curator at the Field Museum and the leading authority on the Green River Formation.
