Millions of years ago, much of what is now the southeastern United States was covered by shallow seas. Some of the earliest whales swam in these seas.
Today, Alabama’s state fossil is the prehistoric whale Basilosaurus cetoides. Neighboring Mississippi is also represented by a prehistoric whale.
When people first saw the strange teeth left by prehistoric whales (left), they thought they were dinosaurs. (The image on the right is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: Pavel.Riha.CB)
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