It’s good to have a hobby.

For some, that can mean you take up running, or hiking or even crafting. However, for one Alabama girl, it means you spend your weekends digging for fossils in your backyard.

And then making a discovery that is 34-million years old.

Sixteen-year-old Lindsey Stallworth had spent a good portion of her life hunting for fossils on her family’s timber property. Most of what she and her family dug up were tiny fossils and shark teeth.

But all of that changed when she started taking a biology class. Her teacher, Drew Gentry, was a paleontologist, and renewed her interest in finding fossils, she said.

“My family mainly looks for different types of shark teeth, but we are realizing now that there was a lot of stuff we’ve never recognized was there,” Stallworth said. “And it’s getting a whole lot more interesting.”

Gentry said that when Stallworth showed him some of the shark teeth fossils, he knew he needed to take a closer look. One looked pretty unique and not a normal find.

Lindsey Stallworth works to clean the whale skull from the ground at her family’s property. Photo courtesy of Alabama School of Mathematics and Science

“She asked, ‘Are you interested in looking for fossils?’” Gentry said.

I said, ‘I need to know more about where you found these teeth.’”

So, one summer day, Gentry and Stallworth began scouring the property around the family’s home.

And within the first hour of digging, a small fragment of bone was found. The pair followed the path of fragments until suddenly they ran into something shocking – several large bones sticking up out of the ground.

“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.”

What slowly came into view was a part of a skull from an ancient whale. Millions of years ago, water covered most of Alabama, and whales and sharks swam through the area.

Lindsey Stallworth cleans the whale skull. Photo courtesy of Alabama School of Mathematics and Science

“We actually spent probably the better part of a week digging very slowly on it with dental picks and small hand tools until we uncovered most of the lower jaw,” Gentry said. “And associated with that lower jaw was a very large tooth.

As soon as that tooth became visible, we were able to determine that we had found a fossil whale.”

The whale, Gentry said, is likely a new species that was related to the Basilosaurus cetoides. The Basilosaurus was thought to be 50-to 60 feet in length and is Alabama’s state fossil.

The teacher and student spent most of their summer vacation digging out the skull and taking it to the laboratory at their school, the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science.

“It has the potential to be a new species, yes, especially considering the time period that this whale is from,” Gentry said.

The pair plan to excavate the rest of the skeleton, about 15-20 feet long next summer. He expects it could take years to remove the entire skeleton if it is buried there.

“We don’t yet know if the entire skeleton is there, but the preservation is pretty fantastic,” Gentry said. “And there are lots of different bones sort of protruding from the hill that we were digging in, so it’s likely that more of the skeleton is present.”

As for what the pair called their discovery, the two had a nickname for it.

The Basilosaurus cetoides, is a 50-60 foot whale species that is Alabama’s state fossil. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution

“The main (name) for it is Karen,” Stallworth joked.

“The whale was quite difficult to deal with on a couple of occasions,” Gentry said, laughing. “We can’t share the other names we called it.”

For Stallworth, this just furthered her love of archaeology.

“I had my career path set, but I am getting a curveball,” she said. “And I’m taking that curveball.”

Watch below to hear Stallworth and Gentry discussion their amazing find!

Sources: AL.com | Washington Post