An Alabama high school student and her teacher have unearthed a fossilized whale skull estimated to be 34 million years old and that might belong to a new species of whale that was previously unknown to science.

Lindsey Stallworth, a junior at the Alabama School of Math and Science in Mobile, was hunting for fossils at her family’s timber property in Monroe County this summer with ASMS science teacher Drew Gentry, who also holds a PhD in paleontology from UAB.

“We saw something and we were like ‘oh my gosh, what is this?’” Stallworth told AL.com. “And once we started digging into it and looking, we slowly realized what we had actually found.”

What they found is at least the skull portion of an ancient whale that swam the shallow seas that covered most of south Alabama millions of years ago.

Stallworth said she had hunted for shark teeth and other fossils on her family’s property for most of her life, but having a biology class with Gentry allowed her to take that interest to the next level.

“My family mainly looks for different types of shark teeth, but we are realizing now that there was a lot of stuff we’ve never recognized was there,” she said. “And it’s getting a whole lot more interesting.”

Gentry has already discovered two new species of turtles from Alabama fossils, and was present to help find, identify and excavate the skull from a chalky hillside.

“We actually spent probably the better part of a week digging very slowly on it with dental picks and small hand tools until we uncovered most of the lower jaw,” Gentry said. “And associated with that lower jaw was a very large tooth.

“As soon as that tooth became visible, we were able to determine that we had found a fossil whale.”

Gentry and Stallworth spent much of the summer excavating the skull and moving it to the new paleontology laboratory at ASMS for further study.

Gentry said the whale appears to be a smaller relative of the Basilosaurus cetoides, a 50- to 60-foot ancient whale that is Alabama’s state fossil. Gentry said the whale may be more closely related to a lesser known whale species called zygorhiza, a smaller whale species that’s been found in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

He said it’s possible that the fossil is from a new species previously unknown to scientists.

“It has the potential to be a new species, yes, especially considering the time period that this whale is from,” he said.

He said the full skeleton is probably about 15-20 feet in length, and that next summer, they will continue excavation of the site to see how much more of the skeleton is intact. If the full skeleton is there, Gentry said it could take years to dig it all out.

“We don’t yet know if the entire skeleton is there, but the preservation is pretty fantastic,” Gentry said. “And there are lots of different bones sort of protruding from the hill that we were digging in, so it’s likely that more of the skeleton is present.”

In the meantime, Stallworth will work with Gentry at ASMS to clean out, study and preserve the skull. Thanks to a new Research Fellows Program at ASMS, Stallworth will be able to work on the fossils during her junior and senior years of high school, and perhaps beyond.

“I already loved biology and I had originally wanted to be a marine biologist,” Stallworth said. “But this is more like marine paleontology because what we see is from the ocean.

“So it’s still really interesting and I’m seeing, what I want to study now, what would it have looked like 34 million years ago?”