It’s a whale of a discovery. Literally.
A team of paleontologists and volunteers from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (SBMNH) recently excavated the skull and other fossilized bones of a small baleen whale, estimated to be 13.5 to 16.5 million years old.
Fossil enthusiast and geologist Chris Driesbach discovered the specimen on the Gaviota Coast in February last year, and alerted the museum to its presence. According to museum staff, the fossil is “unusually complete,” as most similar fossils are often found fragmented. While whales from its era (mid-Miocene) are common, for so many bones to be preserved together is rare.
With fossil hunting, timing is everything. The beach was completely cleaned of sand, Driesbach said, because of seasonal storms, tides, and other just-right factors. He was on the lookout for other exposed fossils and petrified wood along the beach when he decided to sit down and rest.
“[I] looked over and there’s an entire whale just exposed in the shale,” he said. Usually, he added, “You find a vertebra here, a chunk of a skull there. To see it all lined out like that is absolutely nuts.”
With permission from the Coastal Commission, the California State Lands Commission, and Santa Barbara County agencies, SBMNH Dibblee Curator of Earth Science Dr. Jonathan Hoffman led a crew in studying the site and excavating the fossil. Hoffman’s résumé also includes a 2018 excavation of the first fossilized sea cow from the Channel Islands, which marked a kind of rebirth of the museum’s paleontology program.
Each day, the excavation crew shoveled away more than 60 cubic feet of wet sand to expose the specimen in the tidal zone, before chiseling away at the hard rock containing the fossil.
The whale was freed from the rock of the Monterey Formation — a massive geologic unit that stretches across the state — in blocks. Combined, the pieces weighed more than half a ton. Some had to be airlifted from the site by helicopter.
Credit: SBMNH 
Credit: SBMNH 
Credit: SBMNH 
Driesbach (left), who found the fossil, assisted museum paleontologists and other volunteers to excavate the whale skeleton from the sand. | Credit: SBMNH 
Here, the whale’s skeleton is clearly outlined in the shale of the Monterey Formation on the Gaviota Coast. | Credit: Liz Flint for SBMNH
Hoffman, who got his start at the museum in 2017 through the Dibblee Geology Center, said the whale may be a genus or species never before found. Once they prepare the fossil, they’ll be able to pinpoint exactly how old the whale is and identify it. Preparation, however, will be painstaking. It’ll take hundreds of hours to carefully remove the bones from the rock, Hoffman said. But, luckily, they have no shortage of volunteers and staff who are happy to help.
Technically, the specimen belongs to the State of California, so the team’s next steps are figuring out what the state wants to do with it. “We’re in the process of getting that determination right now,” he said.
“This really is the beginning of a long journey to learn more about the fossils and what the fossils can tell us about the environment at the time that the animal was alive,” Hoffman said.
“This is something that we love doing, which is assisting with Public Lands Management, particularly the natural resources on public lands,” he continued. “We’re fortunate to be able to work with the state to conserve this material — making sure that it didn’t just get blasted to smithereens by tidal forces.”
