[en] The shapes of crystal-blocking angular distributions have been used to study the fission decay of excited compound nuclei produced by bombardment of tungsten with ¹⁶O ions. The results show that while most of the fission decays (approx.80%) occur with lifetimes too short to be measured by the blocking technique (tauapproximately-less-than10^-18 sec), a large fraction (approx.20%) corresponds to lifetimes tauapproximately-greater-than10^-16 sec. This indicates a significant contribution from fission after evaporation of several neutrons