w.calvert ww ma rine mu seu m. com Vol. 39, No. 4 Winter 2014–2015 The Right Place and Time! By Dr. Stephen Godfrey, Curator of Paleontology magine that you had an interest in sharks and other fishes since you were a toddler, and then at age seven, your uncle Iand dad find an amazing fossil shark skeleton in your grandparents’ back yard. That’s what happened to Caleb Gibson! His dad, Shawn, and Uncle Donald were adding a sunroom to their parents’ home (Fig. 1). During the course of excavation to place a corner footing, Donald found a vertebra that he later showed family friends Pat Gotsis and Scott Verdin, who identified Figure 2 their find as having come from an extinct shark. When Caleb first learned of the vertebra (Fig. 2), he came along with his dad to search for more, equipped with his pocket-size shark book Continued on page 2 Figure 1: From left to right Donald Gibson, John Nance (CMM), Shawn Gibson, Jo Ann Gibson, and Pat Gotsis discuss how to proceed in the excavation of the 15-million-year-old fossil shark skeleton. This Figure 1 snaggletooth shark skeleton is the most complete of its kind ever found. (CMM photo by Stephen Godfrey) Figure 2: One of the fossilized spool-shaped snaggletooth shark vertebra that Shawn Gibson and his son Caleb dug from his grandparents’ back yard. The shark skeleton was so close to the surface that grass roots are visible in one of the openings in the top of the vertebra that held the base of the neural arch. The backbone of the living snaggletooth shark (Hemipristis elongata) is comprised of 180 vertebrae, including tiny ones that extend to the very end of its tail. There were probably about the same number of vertebrae in the extinct snaggletooth shark. So far, the Gibsons have found about 80. Hand by M. Baughman. (CMM photo by Stephen Godfrey) Prehistoric Tilefish Found at Calvert Cliffs By Dr. Stephen Godfrey, Curator of Paleontology The Right Place and Time! ........1 new species of extinct tilefish was recently discovered along Calvert Cliffs. This Prehistoric Tilefish new tilefish is named “ereborensis” after “Erebor,” the Elvish name Found at Calvert Cliffs ...........1 for the Lonely Mountain in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. A Museum Store Update ...........5 Calvert Cliffs, like the Lonely Mountain, holds a treasure trove of fossils. The Lady and the Light ...........6 Like some of their living relatives (fish in the Education Update ...............7 family Malacanthidae), these prehistoric tilefish Activities and Events .............8 tunneled into the sea floor where they made homes in which to take refuge. As the cliffs erode, these That's the Spirit! ................10 sediments, once part of the ocean floor, preserve Volunteer Spotlight ..............11 the fossil burrows and the fossilized skeletons of Stories Skin Deep: some of these extinct fish. The fossilized remains of The Culture of Tattoos ............11 fish along Calvert Cliffs are very rare, so when fish Development and Membership ....12 Tilefish continued on page 4 Endowments at CMM ............13 Fossil skull (16 million years old from Calvert Cliffs) of a new species of tilefish (Malacanthidae); Lopholatilus ereborensis in left lateral view. (CMM photo by Stephen Godfrey) Staff Update ...................14 2 The Right Place and Time! (Continued from page 1) and a couple of tools. He spent an entire protective covering to enable us to lift Figure 3 day off from school working alongside his it safely out of the ground. As we dug dad, in search of more vertebrae — being around the shark skeleton and wrapped rewarded for his efforts by finding more it in protective plaster bandages, Caleb in the soil that had been dug out and was there to watch. A couple of days thrown off to the side (Fig. 3). Excavations later, he and his dad were back to dig to uncover more of the shark continued some more. This time they unearthed until they realized that there were lots of another shark vertebra and Caleb found teeth arranged in rows just like in the jaws other kinds of fossil shark teeth. of living sharks. On the morning of Halloween, Why in their back yard? Shawn Gibson contacted me about Millions of years ago, the Gibsons’ back an unusual fossil-find that his brother, yard was the bottom of the Atlantic Donald, had made. At that point, the Ocean. The ocean covered southern museum became involved. Shawn’s Maryland and other parts of the Atlantic description of the skeleton of a fossil Coastal Plain because during most of shark was so unlikely and yet so the Miocene epoch, global climate compelling that I just had to see it, and was warmer than it is now. The polar Figure 3: Caleb holds one of many fossil the sooner the better. Both John Nance ice cap did not exist, so that extra snaggletooth shark vertebrae that he and his and I were wonderstruck at what they water allowed the Atlantic to reach dad dug up from his grandparents’ back yard. had unearthed — an undisturbed inland to Washington, D.C. When (Photo by Eileen Gibson) skeleton of a fossilized snaggletooth their subdivision was built, bulldozers shark from the Miocene epoch. Later removed younger sediments leaving only snaggletooth or weasel shark (Hemipristis that day, John and I returned and with a thin veneer of Miocene sea-bottom elongata; Family Hemigaleidae). It is help from Shawn, Pat Gotsis, and Bob covering the fossilized remains of this found in the Indo-West Pacific, including Hazen, we applied the right kind of shark … serendipity at work! There’s no the Red Sea, from southeast Africa to the telling what else might be buried around Philippines, north to China, and south the other homes in that community. to Australia, in coastal waters at depths of 4 to 400 feet. The living snaggletooth Quarterly Newsletter of the What did this shark look like? grows up to eight feet in length, and Calvert Marine Museum The closest living relative to this extinct preys upon crabs, cephalopods, other (A Division of Calvert County Government) and the Miocene shark is also known as the sharks, rays, and fish. The teeth of the Calvert Marine Museum Society, Inc. Continued on next page (ISSN 0887-651X) C. Douglass Alves Jr., Director Sherrod Sturrock, Deputy Director and Editor Figure 4 Robert Hurry, Assistant Editor Figure 4: A fossil snaggletooth The bugeye was the traditional sailing craft shark tooth (Hemipristis serra) of the Bay, and was built in all its glory from the Gibsons’ find. It is still partially covered in the reddish- at Solomons, the “Bugeye Capital of the colored ocean-bottom sand that World.” Membership dues are used to fund buried the dead shark during special museum projects, programs, and the Miocene. These sharks have this newsletter. Address comments and the largest serrations relative membership applications to: to the size of their teeth of any of the many different kinds of Calvert Marine Museum Society, Inc. P.O. Box 97 fossil sharks known from along Solomons, MD 20688-0097 Calvert Cliffs. At one time, 410-326-2042 these sharks were incredibly FAX 410-326-6691 TDD 410-535-6355 successful, their fossilized teeth Museum Store: 410-326-2750 being found around the world www.calvertmarinemuseum.com in marine sediments. So it is Layout by DirectMail.com still a mystery as to why this kind of snaggletooth became extinct. (CMM photo by Stephen Godfrey) WINTER 2014–2015 3 The Right Place and Time! (Continued from page 2) Figure 5: Life drawing of what the extinct eight-foot-long snaggletooth shark might have looked like. (CMM drawing by Jolene Schafer) extinct snaggletooth shark are larger of teeth will help us decide if and how by my parents, seeing an opportunity and wider than those of its living relative best to remove the sand from around the and taking advantage of it for my benefit. (Fig. 4). In life, the Gibson’s snaggletooth delicate fossil. Once that is done, we In my case, many of those consisted of shark was probably ten feet long (Fig. 5). hope to be able to put the skeleton on visits to museums, or taking me to places display. and allowing me to collect stuff for my Course correction! We were very fortunate that bedroom museum like pine cones, sea We originally thought that the shark had professional videographer Robert shells, fossils, and road-kill skeletons that been buried upside down, the usual Cantrell (AllFinsOn.com) filmed and sharpened my interests in the natural way in which carcasses settle to the photographed the excavation. Might world. At this juncture, it is impossible ocean floor (decomposition gases in there be a documentary on the horizon? to know how and to what extent this their abdomen help to invert the body). To tell this story in film and include the experience will shape Caleb’s future However upon closer examination of living snaggletooth, that would be a lot interests. Suffice to say that this was a a set of snaggletooth jaws (Fig. 6) just of fun … good one and it’s not over yet. donated to the museum by shark expert Bill Heim, it became clear that this Positive experiences snaggletooth was lying right side up When I think of Caleb’s good fortune of when it was buried in sand. Geologist being in the right place at the right time, Dr. Peter Vogt has already suggested that it reminds me of experiences that shaped a storm-driven sand-wave might have my life, particularly those orchestrated covered the shark carcass before it was scavenged or destroyed.