A teenager finds a 34-million-year-old whale skull in his backyard

Student Lindsay Stallworth was searching for shark teeth with her science teacher, Andrew Gentry, when she came across the skull in a canyon on her family’s property. The skull was large and heavy, about 1.5 meters long, and was the skull of a whale.

What do you want to know about a whale?

• The age of the skull is more than 34 million years
• It belongs to an extinct type of whale
• The skull is the first complete Aetiocetus skeleton to be found in the United States.

Researchers from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Alabama Geological Survey (AGS) examined the skull and concluded that it belonged to an extinct species of whale called Aetiocetus weltoni. Aetiocetus whale was a medium-sized predator that lived in the Eocene period, about 34-56 million years ago.

“I sent pictures of the tooth to my good friend and fellow paleontologist, Dr. James Parham, of the University of California, Fullerton, who in turn sent them to Dr. Jorge Vélez Socurby, of the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, Nobles for Living Science,” he said. “Dr. Vélez Sochoby specializes in fossils of marine mammals and was able to identify our find as a type of carnivorous whale.”

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This discovery is important because it provides new information about the evolution of whales. The skull is the first complete Aetiocetus skeleton to be found in the United States. And it shows that whales were already well adapted to life in the water millions of years ago.

“At the moment, we only have the skull, but we discovered many elements behind the skull while excavating the skull, which indicates that there is more to the skeleton,” Gentry said. “We’ll know more next summer!”

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