RARE Mazon Creek Larval Coelacanth Fossil

Description: The Mazon Creek deposits of the region near Braidwood, Illinois rival the other famous Lagerstatten of the Burgess Shale, Solnhofen, and Liaoning for the variety of detailed life preserved. Many exquisitely-preserved specimens are found in the ironstone nodules that make up the deposits. The majority of collecting areas are the spoil heaps of abandoned coal mines, the most famous of which is Peabody Coal Pit 11. Pit 11 now serves as a cooling pond for the Braidwood nuclear power plant, but with over 100 other localities, specimens still come to light. This fish has a rather cosmopolitan distribution, and is found in Carboniferous coal bed deposits of North America and Europe.

This fine example displays excellent finnage and vertebral column , as well as some skull bones, remarkable for such a poorly ossified specimen. This one did not survive long. Some prefer to separate this one from R. elegans, leaving that name solely for the European taxon, and use the name Rhabdoderma exiguum. Whatever you call it, this is a remarkably well-preserved example collected in the early 1970s shortly before the region was flooded.