Student-Teacher Duo Uncover a 20-foot, 30 Million-Year-Old Whale Fossil in Alabama

An Alabama high schooler searching for fossils made a whopping discovery with her biology teacher: a 30 million-year-old skull belonging to a whale. 

Lindsey Stallworth, a junior at the Alabama School of Math and Science in Mobile, made the discovery on her family’s farm, where she regularly hunts for fossils, the school said in a news release. She showed off her findings to her biology teacher, Drew Gentry, a paleontologist who has studied Alabama fossils since childhood.

“We would go out and pick up shark teeth and fossil shells, but we never knew anyone that could tell us anything about them,” Stallworth said.

Gentry traveled to Stallworth’s farm over the summer to research shark teeth Stallworth had found. After only a few hours of searching, the two made a whale of a discovery.

Tiny pieces of fossilized bone on a small hillside led the pair to several large bones sticking out of the soil, the release said.

Those bones were from a 20-foot whale, appearing to be a relative of Basilosarurus cetoides, an ancient whale and Alabama's state fossil, USA TODAY reported. The Basilosarurus cetoides lived in the shallow seas along the Alabama coast some 34 million years ago, according to the University of Alabama.

“I’ve been collecting fossils in Alabama for more than 30 years, and this was easily one of the best fossil sites I’ve seen anywhere in the state,” Gentry said.

Gentry and Stallworth spent June and July excavating the whale’s remains and sent them to a paleontology lab at their school. It could take several years to fully excavate the fossil, Gentry said. So far, the duo has only excavated the skull.