A 20 million year old whale fossil has been pulled from a beach in Victoria after a family spotted something unusual sticking out of the sand late last year.
The one tonne fossil was found at Ocean Grove Beach on Bellarine Peninsula in December when Queensland holidaymaker Kristina Davidson noticed bones protruding from the sand and contacted Museums Victoria.
Ms Davidson said the remarkable discovery happened purely by chance. ‘I pretty much stumbled over it… we spent some time trying to dig it up and look at it and took some photos,’ she told Nine News.
‘There’s the spine, there’s rib bones, it’s just kind of all there. It’s just mind-blowing.’ What began as a curious beach moment quickly turned into a major scientific effort. Around 20 staff from Museums Victoria and Barwon Coast used heavy machinery to carefully excavate the fossil, completing the operation yesterday.
Experts now believe the find could be one of the largest whale fossils ever discovered in Australia. The fossil has been transported to Melbourne Museum where scientists are now studying the ancient remains.
Museums Victoria senior paleontologist Dr Erich Fitzgerald said he first learned about the fossil through an email just before Christmas. ‘I was actually about to go on leave for Christmas … a member of the public sent an inquiry to the museum’s public enquiry line.
‘[They said:] “We think we’ve found something on the beach at Ocean Grove”. ‘I went down on the 19th of December to scout about, have a bit of a look. Lo and behold, yep, they found something alright.’
Dr Fitzgerald described the whale fossil as one of the more significant discoveries he has encountered, especially since many of the bones appear to still be connected.
‘Every fossil we find has its own unique significance … it’s rare to find a skeleton where there are many of the bones connected together,’ he said. A small tooth sticking out of the fossil has already given scientists an important clue.
‘There’s one little tooth that we can see exposed on the side of this block, and that tooth suggests that this is from a really quite primitive group of toothed echo-locating whales.’ Dr Fitzgerald said fossils from this time period roughly 21 to 23 million years ago are extremely rare around the world and could help scientists better understand a critical stage in whale evolution.
‘It’s a critical episode where the Earth’s climate and oceans were changing really dramatically,’ he said.
‘This fossil from Ocean Grove doesn’t just have local, state, national significance, it has the real chance to shed light on the global picture of whale evolution through what you might consider the missing years of whale history.’