The greatest understanding of these fossil fish was achieved in the late 19th century by the great Croatian palaeontologist and one of our must prominent museum experts – Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger. Before he achieved planetary fame with his discovery of the Krapina Neandertals, he studied these fossil fish, collecting and determining the majority of the Hvar specimens housed at the museum today.

In his renowned 1895 monograph entitled De piscibus fossilibus Comeni, Mrzleci, Lesinae et M. Libanonis et appendix de piscibus oligocaenicis od Tuffer, Sogar et Trifail [The fossil fish of Komena, Mrzleka, Hvar and M. Libanon with an addendum on the Oligocene fish by Tueffer, Zagora and Trifalia], he outlined the results of research on fossil fish from the Cretaceous period that originated from the Croatian islands and the karst landscapes in Slovenia around Trieste. He systematically described a number of previously unknown species, genera and families of fish.

Kramberger wrote, “The Hvar platy limestones with fossil fish have been studied in two directions: fauntistically and stratigraphically. Though the conclusions were made on the bases of one or the other type of research were completely the same, today we still have not definitively resolved the issue of the age of these platy limestones.”