Stromatolites are the main feature of supratidal zones and the upper part of the intertidal zone on tidal flats of carbonate platforms, meaning that this is an area that is above sea level during low tide, but underwater during high tide.

But let’s return to the island of Hvar and its fossil fishes.

If we look back into history, we will learn that the first record of the finding of fossil fish on the island of Hvar (then called Paros) date back to antiquity. Hippolytus noted that “Xenophanes (570 – 480 BC) found an imprint of a fish and a shark in a quarry in Syracuse, the imprint of a sardine on Paros, and imprints of all possible marine animals on Melita”.

If the speculations are true about Xenophanes findings of a “fossil sardine (άφύή) in the depth of rock” on the island of Hvar (Paros) (100 – 150 years before Hvar was first mentioned in 385/4 BC), this could be considered acceptable and even highly likely. Namely, palaeontology is the science of the study of fossils, the remains of once living creatures that lived on Earth at the same time as the rocks were formed that make up the island of Hvar. This is tens and hundreds of millions of years before humans inhabited the Grapčeva Cave and others, built the first settlements, and created the civilisation of the sun.

The first important record of the palaeontological finds on the island of Hvar was given by Albert Fortis back in 1774, in his book Viaggio in Dalmazia [Travels in Dalmatia].