Monte Bolca preserves a coral reef fish community
An Italian quarry yields the oldest assemblage of reef fishes that look thoroughly modern.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Eocene, Cenozoic
Monte Bolca in northern Italy preserves fishes from a tropical Tethyan reef in extraordinary detail, including colour patterns. What makes it important is how familiar it looks: butterflyfishes, angelfishes, surgeonfishes and other reef families are all present and already specialised. The modern coral reef fish community, one of the most diverse vertebrate assemblages on the planet, is essentially assembled by the early Eocene. The quarry has been worked for fossils since the sixteenth century.