A famous Eocene exceptionally preserved biota from close to Verona, Italy.
"Following extreme climatic warming events, Eocene Lagerstätten document aquatic and terrestrial vertebrate faunas surprisingly similar to modern counterparts. This transition in marine systems is best documented in the earliest teleost-dominated coral reef assemblage of Pesciara di Bolca, northern Italy, from near the end of the Eocene Climatic Optimum. Its rich fauna shows similarities with that of the modern Great Barrier Reef in niche exploitation by and morphological disparity among teleost primary consumers."
"Pesciara di Bolca Konservat–Lagerstätte from northern Italy occupies a special place in understanding the shift toward modern marine ecosystems. This late Ypresian Lagerstätte with more than 250 vertebrate species (approximately 90 families) coincides chronologically with the latest phase of the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum and that of the ‘reef gap’ in which foraminiferal/algal banks and shoals replaced coral-dominated reefs globally across low latitudes (57–42 mya). The locality also sat in the Tethys Sea connecting the Atlantic and Indo–Pacific oceans. Documenting the earliest occurrences of many acanthomorph lineages, the Bolca fishes represent the earliest of clearly defined coral reef fish assemblages."
There's a new paper on this material in Friedman & Carnevale 2018. Journal of the Geological Society, 175, 569-579.
The micritic limestones contain abundant fossil fish, plants and invertebrates, most of which show evidence of soft tissues. The micritic limestone has been referred to the Alveolina dainelli zone (late Ypresian, c. 48 Ma; Papazzoni & Trevisani 2006) based on benthic foraminifera.
