Cuban Authorities Thwart Traffic of Cuban Fossil Fish

 Matanzas, Sept 22 (ACN) Cuban authorities thwarted the illegal extraction from the island of a 23-million-year Cuban fossil fuel on September 8th, officials announced Thursday during the 7th Workshop on Museology and Society.

Zahili Acosta, senior specialist with the Office of Cultural Goods at the Juan Gualberto Gomez International Airport in the locality of Varadero, said that the species is an almost complete fossil skeleton of an Actinopterygii or ray-finned fish, in good conditions.

The fish might have probably been extracted from areas around Varadero tourist center, so it may belong to the local Colon geological formation, according to the technical report, said the expert.

This kind of illegal actions are difficult to detect by border officers said Acosta and explained that a Canadian citizen tried to take with him the fossil fish, whose dark color called the attention of customs officers and they called me to check it out, she noted.

According to Acosta, Customs officers have thwarted similar illegal attempts to take away over 13 objects under legal protection since 2008 up to date.

During the workshop, underway in western Matanzas city, 120 delegates from Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Spain are meeting a tight working agenda which includes visits to local sites of cultural interest.

The Actinopterygii, or ray-finned fishes, are the largest class of fishes. In existence for about 400 million years, since the Early Devonian, it consists of some 42 orders containing more than 480 families, at least 80 of which are known only from fossils, according to the British Encyclopedia.