0.75" Aidachar Fossil Fish Tooth (Morocco)

Species: Aidachar pankowskii

Age: Upper Cretaceous, Cenomanian stage, (~96 Million Years)

Location found: Kem kem bed, Morocco

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