25.4" Wide, Fossil Fish Plate Featuring a Stingray - Wyoming

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.