A 15 million-year-old, 1,000-pound whale
skull was found on the Potomac River shore of
Virginia’s Stratford Hall Plantation – the
birthplace of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee
(born in 1807, which suddenly seems like not
such a long time ago). Bellow is a video of the excavation, put up by
John Nance, paleontology collections manager
at the Calvert Marine Museum, which
uncovered and now houses the skull. The skull is from a baleen whale — a
toothless filter-feeder, according to a Calvert
Marine Museum press release. At six feet long,
it’s one of the largest whale skulls ever
collected in the area. The rest of the skeleton is still buried in the
cliffs. In its press release, the museum said
the whale “would have been 25 or more feet
long.” “It would have been similar in size to a
modern day minke whale,” Nance told The
Huffington Post. (Minke whales are about 30
feet long.) Nance told The Washington Post that the
species can’t be identified conclusively until
the whole whale skeleton has been examined,
which could happen within the next couple of
weeks. The Stratford Cliffs, where the skull was found
— and where a boy once died in a landslide
while trying to add a cross to the cliffs’
graffiti – is famously rich with fossils from the
Miocene era, from about 23 million to 5.3
million years ago, when the climate was warmer and ocean covered much of the coast. “The Potomac as we know it today wasn’t
here 15 million years ago,” said Nance. “There
were baleen whales, toothed whales like
dolphins, dugongs, turtles, sharks and
crocodiles all living in the area at this time.” Dugongs are like manatees, and we’re finding
it hard to think about much except what it
would be like to see these animals living
within swimming distance of the nation’s
capital (now about a two-hour drive from
Stratford Hall). The only thing that can take our minds off that is imagining them also
consorting with some mastodons —
enormous elephant-like animals whose fossils
have also been discovered nearby. Hell, since
we’re in fantasyland now, let’s also imagine
that George Washington, whose birthplace is also in Westmoreland County, is there, too. Back in reality, Nance said the whale is a
dream find, but not the end of his dream
finds. He said his hope remains that at some
point, the cliffs will present him with the fossil
of a Miocene land animal. “A horse or a rhino,” he said. “It’s really
amazing to think about this area. It was a
tropical place … completely different from what it is today.”
