The Story in a Single Bone
I could never pick a single favorite fossil, but this one is at the top of the list. Why? Because it tells a story. It's a Miocene whale vertebra I found as you see it, lying on a beach in Virginia four years ago. It was waiting for me. Whale bones are pretty common on that beach, most folks don't take much interest as they are looking for shark teeth. This one is special. Most verts have reasonably smooth ends, with fine, concentric rings. This one has a weird, bubbly mass at the center of each end. I don't know anything about whale pathology, and apparently no one at the Smithsonian did, either. I talked with a prehistoric whale expert and his best guess was scarring from decompression sickness. Yes, whales can get the bends if they surface too fast. But why would a whale decide to go up that fast? This was a big adult by the standards of the day. The vert is 6" long. It should know better, right? I've pondered this over the last few years and came up with a plausible hypothesis. There was one thing bigger and toothier than an adult whale about the size of an orca: Isurus megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived. Picture this predatory whale being chased by a shark that could - and wanted to – chomp it in two. The whale isn’t thinking about the water pressure, just getting away. Did it escape? If this mass is the result of bone healing, then yes it did! But that remains for the whale experts to figure out in the future.
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