Fossils

Marine fossils come in many shapes and sizes. They range from early whale and dolphin bones to megaladon teeth that help us learn about the first sharks, and even small single-celled foraminifera.

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Nick Pyenson points to a skull and skeleton of a fossil whale.

Excavating a "toothed" baleen whale...

Nick Pyenson, the Smithsonian's curator of fossil marine mammals, points to the skull and skeleton of a 23-25 million year old fossil "toothed" mysticete whale. Credit: NDP and J. A. Goldbogen/SI The whales that we see in today's...

Foraminifera

Microscopic, single-celled organisms called foraminifera have a fossil record that extends from...

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A rendering of an underwater marine scene from the Cambrian Period, featuring an arthropod, annelids, and other animals.

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A Collection of Cambrian Fossils

When you're standing in a museum surrounded by fossils, you can almost imagine drifting through time to when long-extinct...
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