Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jasrep The fossil fishes of the archaeological site of Palenque, Chiapas, southeastern Mexico Jesús Alvarado-Ortega a, ⁎ , Martha Cuevas-García b , Kleyton Cantalice a a Instituto de Geología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegación Coyoacán, Ciudad de México, 04510, México b Dirección de Registro Público de Monumentos y Zonas Arqueológicas, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Av. Victoria 110, Copilco El Bajo, Ciudad de México, 04510, México ABSTRACT Since the end of the nineteenth century, different remains of fossilized fishes had been observed or recovered from the Mayan City of Palenque. Although some efforts had been made to identify these objects, their tax- onomical nature and possible origin within the geological environment of this archaeological site are poorly understood. In this work, we review these fossils recovered in Palenque and other two Mayan cities, Agua Clara and the El Lacandón, which are deposited into the collections of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (Mexico); we describe the morphological characteristics that allow us to identify them taxonomically. This research also reports the results of a paleontological exploration through the different Paleocene-Miocene sedimentary geological units in the surroundings of Palenque; the fossils thus collected belong to the same groups of those found within the archaeological Maya context. These results suggest that such geological units are the sources of all these fossils. In this exercise, three types of anthropogenic features produced by the Maya people were discovered on the fossils. Paint stains and plaster spots suggest that these fossils were painted. The pronounced differential wearing marks in some regions along the cutting edges of shark teeth and ray tail spines show that these fossils were used as cutting tools. Besides, the surfaces excavated around fossils preserved in slabs demonstrate that some Maya people intended on discovering and recognizing these objects, as modern paleontologists do. 1. Introduction At the end of the nineteenth century, Sapper (1896) reported the occurrence of “fossil fish remains in a very fine-grained limestone which resembles the lithographic stone of Solenhofen… used in the construction of Palenque”. Fifty-five years later, Mulleried (1951) provided a superficial description of two fossils bearing rocks collected in this Maya site into the Chiapas State, southeastern Mexico. He re- cognized the Sapper's sample in a slab carrier of fish remains that “probably” belongs to the fossil genus Pycnodus Agassiz, 1833, as well as other unidentified fishes and some undetermined foraminifera. In concordance with the geological occurrence of Pycnodus known at that time, the Eocene age was suggested for this slab. The second Mulleried's sample, collected in an unreported building of Palenque site, bears “macro and micro-foraminifera (Orbitollites), gastropods, bivalves, and echinoid spines” that suggested the Middle Oligocene–Early Miocene age. The authors of the present paper unsuccessfully tried to locate the specimens referred above. Our search included the collections of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), Instituto de Geología (Igl, UNAM), and Instituto de Biología (IB, UNAM). Hence, now it is not possibly to analyze those samples because neither Sapper (1896) nor Mulleried (1951) provided data about the final deposit of such materials. Since the firsts archaeological field investigations on Palenque, Ruz- Lhuillier (1958a–d, 1959) [under the advisement of Dr. Roberto Llamas, then Director of the IB, UNAM] and other authors reported the occurrence of fossil shark teeth and stingray spines from different pri- mary (offerings and tombs) and secondary (building debris and cere- monial dumps) deposits in this ancient city (Borhegyi, 1961; Acosta, 1976; Fernández, 1991; González-Cruz, 1993; Olvera-Carrasco, 1997; López Bravo et al., 2003; Venegas-Duran, 2005). According to Cuevas- García (2008), the fossil nature of these materials was not originally recognized in some of these reports; hence, the possible patterns in the use of fossil elements in Maya rituals of Palenque had not been the target of accurate researches. The studies of these elements have im- plications for our understanding on the Mayan cosmology. The dis- covery of these fossils should encourage the launch of new research https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.11.029 Received 4 August 2017; Received in revised form 12 November 2017; Accepted 20 November 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: alvarado@geologia.unam.mx (J. Alvarado-Ortega). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 17 (2018) 462–476 2352-409X/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T