Fernandina Beach man stumbles upon ancient whale bone

Experts believe Ray Zatz found a piece of history.

He found what looked like a tooth, or piece of bone, while running along Fernandina Beach.

“It was in the sand and I happened to look, went past it, doubled up, pulled it out, and am like, ‘Wow I may have something here,’” Matz said.

He didn’t know what it was, so he went to Facebook

“I went on one of the networking sites and that’s where everyone started posting all kinds of crazy stuff,” Matz said.

People commented thinking it could be a shark tooth, but Dr. Jeremy Stalker at Jacksonville University believes it’s something else.

“It’s a fossil, a fossilized bone,” Stalker said.

He said it’s a fossilized mammal bone that could be tens of thousands to millions of years old.

And he can tell because of the dark porous part on the bottom

“That’s where the blood vessels will be running through the bone,” Stalker said.

Stalker added that people usually find fossils after a big storm like Hurricane Matthew.

While Matz was hoping it was a tooth of some sort, he still thinks it’s a cool find.

Matz says he may get back in touch with experts to see what he should do with it and if they can find out exactly what mammal it came from.

Cox Media Group