05182 - Top Rare 2.29 Inch Aidachar pankowskii Predatory Cretaceous Fish Dentary Bone KemKem Beds

Rare partial dentary bone of this incredible species of giant predator fish that reigned that waters of the Cretaceous fluvial systems. It is one of the biggest piscivorous fish of this ecosystems. 

Aidachar (named for aydahar, a mythical Kazakh dragon) is an extinct genus of ichthyodectiform teleost ray-finned fish from the Late Cretaceous of Kyzyl Kum, central Asia. It was named by Lev Nesov in 1981. At first, he tentatively described the fossil material as the jaw fragments of a ctenochasmatid pterosaur (a flying reptile), but reinterpreted Aidachar as a fish in 1986. The type species is A. paludalis.

The abundant fish fauna which can be found in the cretaceous layers of the Kem Kem Basin is large and varied. Recently Cavin et al., (2015) made an important revision of the cretaceous association of continental fish in the south of Morocco.

Taxonomic Composition and Trophic Structure of the Continental Bony Fish Assemblage from the Early Late Cretaceous of Southeastern Morocco

The teeth with strong and vivid fossilization colors such as red, orange and black come from small paleochannels composed by thin layers, in the intermediate and upper stratigraphic levels (Red Sandstone Beds), from the Aoufous and Ifezouane Formations (Kem Kem Basin, South of Morocco). The lithology of this body of sediment is characterized by the dominance of sandstones (also known as arenites) and fluvial gravel, of siliceous nature. Sometimes large concentrations of iron oxide are present, and then a small sample of that is usually present at the base of the tooth. These mineralizations are responsible for the wide range of beautiful reddish color tones, slowly drawn during millions of years via fossil-diagenetic processes. The complicated sedimentarian architecture of the layers where most large vertebrates are found makes the excavation methodology a real challenge. Sometimes the local miners have to excavate long tunnels that follow the distribution of the fossiliferous layer.