Family Goes On Fishing Trip, Finds 32-Million-Year-Old Fossil

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A routine fishing trip on the Alabama River turned extraordinary when a family spotted what would become a scientific breakthrough.

The Colemans discovered a fossilized shell of a 32-million-year-old leatherback sea turtle during a 2021 outing in Clarke County. The find represents a previously unknown species, according to Fox 10 News.

Thirteen-year-old Talah Coleman first noticed the unusual formation on the riverbank near Jackson. “I was the one that pointed it out. I was like that rock looks a little weird,” Talah said. “Me and my dad checked it out cause we thought it was just mud and we got closer to it and were like, that’s not mud. That’s something!” (RELATED: 280-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Absolutely Shocking Secret That Might Change Everything)

The family, who regularly hunts for fossils during fishing breaks, sat on their discovery for about a year before contacting Dr. Andrew Gentry from the Gulf State Park Learning Campus.

“It is such an absolutely extraordinarily rare occurrence to get an intact leatherback shell like this. It is beyond one in a million,” Dr. Gentry said.

Gentry assembled a team to excavate the one-ton fossil, the outlet reported. The Dauphin Island Sea Lab provided a boat for transport, though the massive weight nearly lifted the vessel‘s stern out of the water.

“It’s a once in a lifetime experience for us to find something like that,” Adam Coleman said. “It’s something that will probably never happen to us again and it’s pretty special.”

Paleontologists confirmed the fossil belonged to a new genus and species of leatherback sea turtle. The Poarch Creek Tribe named it Ueloca colemanorum in their native Muskogee language, meaning water and turtle.

The fossil now resides at Birmingham’s McWane Science Center.