A schoolgirl from Alabama recently found a massive ancient fossilized whale skull while digging on her family's property.
Over summer vacation schoolgirl Lindsey Stallworth - together with her science teacher, Drew Gentry, conducted excavations at the Stallworth family's timber property in Monroe County, Alabama. After only a few hours of searching, they stumbled upon a huge bone sticking out of the hill.
The original impetus to excavate the area was the fossilized shark teeth that Stallworth brought to class last year. She had been finding such teeth since she was 7 years old.
"The biggest thing I previously found was a shark’s tooth about three inches tall and wide that took up the palm of my hands," said Stallworth.
According to the teacher, at first they had "very little idea" what they had found, except that it was a large vertebrate animal. Only later, with informational support from the US Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Alabama, the preliminary age of the findings was established.
"We saw something and we were like ‘oh my gosh, what is this? And once we started digging into it and looking, we slowly realized what we had actually found," Stallworth told local media outlet.
After about a week of slowly removing excess stone with toothpicks and small hammers, the pair were able to expose a large tooth from the lower jaw of a large animal. The researchers identified the find from a photo of the tooth as an ancient predatory whale.
The skull, nicknamed Karen, has been taken to the Alabama School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences for study. Lindsey Stallworth plans to resume excavations next year: some elements indicate the ground may hide other parts of the skeleton of the ancient animal.