Geologists Scoop Lava With Shovels

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A​n Alabama teen's hunt for shark teeth led to the find of a lifetime over summer break: A 30-million-year-old fossilized whale skull.

L​indsey Stallworth, a junior at Alabama School of Math and Science, grew up collecting fossils on her family's farm in Monroe County, Alabama, about 80 miles north of Mobile.

“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 in a news release from her school. “We just thought they were cool.”

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She showed some of them to biology teacher Andrew Gentry last year. Gentry is a paleontologist who is the lead author on two different studies credited with the discovery of previously unknown species of prehistoric turtles.

He wanted to know more about where Stallworth found her shark teeth.

When school let out for the summer, Gentry visited the Stallworth farm for a fossil hunt. The property sits in a region once covered by a shallow ocean where massive sea creatures roamed. Several fossil hunting sites are nearby, and the Alabama state fossil is a giant whale that lived between 34 and 40 million years ago.

A few hours into the expedition with Stallworth, Gentry spotted a line of tiny bone fragments on the ground. The trail led them up a hill where they discovered larger bones that had been slowly uncovered by erosion.

“We saw something and we were like ‘oh my gosh, what is this?’” Stallworth told AL.com. “And once we started digging into it and looking, we slowly realized what we had actually found.”

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Stallworth, Gentry and a few helpers spent much of the summer excavating the site and transporting remains back to the school. So far they've identified the skull of a prehistoric whale. It's possible there's more, still buried in the earth.

I​t could even be a species never seen before.

“If the complete skeleton is there, it could take several years before we have the entire animal back in the lab,” Gentry said.

(​Sarah Netter contributed to this report)

Weather.com reporter Jan Childs covers breaking news and features related to weather, space, climate change, the environment and everything in between.

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