Vertebrate fossils
Whale & dolphin bone
Cetacean bone is the heaviest, densest non-tooth find on a typical hunt. Vertebrae are the most recognizable — round centra with the neural arch usually broken off. Ear bones (tympanic bullae) are the prize: dense, fist-sized, shaped like a cooked clam.
How to spot it
- ▸Honeycomb internal structure — unmistakable when you see a broken edge
- ▸Vertebrae: round, drum-shaped centra with two flat faces
- ▸Ear bones (bullae): dense, smooth, usually 2–4" — feel astonishingly heavy for their size
- ▸Often phosphatized to dark brown or black; sometimes iron-stained
- ▸Modern whale bone is white and porous; fossil bone is dense and dark
Geological context
Basilosaurid (early whale) bones from Eocene Alabama and modern dolphin/whale bones from Pliocene-Pleistocene Florida are both common.
Reported at these sites
California
Ernst Quarries / Sharktooth Hill
Khouribga Province
Khouribga phosphate mines
Apulia
Pietra Leccese (Salento, Lecce)
California
Sharktooth Hill (Round Mountain Silt)
Mellieħa
Pwales Beach / Globigerina Limestone (Malta)
North Carolina
Tar / Pamlico River sandbars (Greenville–Washington NC)
North Carolina
Neuse River bars (New Bern NC)
Saitama
Chichibu Miocene exposures (Saitama, Japan)
About the category
Bones, vertebrae, and ear-bones from extinct and modern marine vertebrates. Heavier and denser than rock of the same size, with a tell-tale honeycomb internal structure when broken.