FOX10 News reporter Shelby Myers framed it as the kind of outdoor story that usually ends with a few photos, a cooler full of fish, and maybe a handful of shark teeth – until it suddenly didn’t. What started as a normal day on the Alabama River in Clarke County for the Coleman family turned into a fossil discovery so unusual that even the expert brought in to study it called it “beyond one-in-a-million.”
The Colemans – Adam, his wife Adrienne, and their two kids Talah and Corey – weren’t new to riverbank wandering, Myers explained. They’re the type of family that enjoys being outside and doesn’t just fish the river; they hunt for fossils along it, too, with Adam describing it as a tradition passed down from his dad.
That detail matters, because this wasn’t a random stumble from people who never leave the pavement. This was a family that knows how to look, where to look, and what counts as “normal” when you’re scanning sandbars and muddy edges, which is exactly why the thing they found stood out.
And what they found, Myers reported, was a fossilized shell of a leatherback sea turtle—intact enough to trigger an excavation, a team response, and eventually a display spot in a major science center.
The Coleman Family’s Fossil-Hunting Routine
Myers described the family’s normal rhythm on the water in a way that feels familiar to anyone who’s ever spent time on a river: you stop on the bank, stretch your legs, poke around, and see what turns up. Adam told Myers that when they’re out there, they like to take breaks from fishing and walk around the riverbank looking for small finds like shark teeth and shark vertebrae.
It’s easy to picture the scene: a family outing where the kids are half-exploring, half-competing to see who finds the coolest thing, while the adults keep an eye out for anything worth pocketing or photographing.
Adrienne and the kids, Myers said, loved tagging along, and the “fossil hunting” part wasn’t treated like a serious scientific mission so much as a fun, almost treasure-hunt habit—until a single moment in 2021 changed the stakes.
That’s when Talah, who was 13 years old at the time, noticed something that didn’t fit the usual “just another rock” pattern.
“That Rock Looks A Little Weird”
In Myers’ telling, the discovery begins with a kid’s instinct – the kind of observation adults sometimes miss because they’re thinking about schedules and gear and the next stop. Talah told Myers she was the one who pointed it out, because from a distance it didn’t look right.
She remembered saying, “That rock looks a little weird,” and she and her dad went to check it out assuming it might just be mud or something ordinary clumped together along the bank.
But as they got closer, the “mud” theory fell apart fast. Talah described realizing it wasn’t mud at all, saying, “That’s not mud. That’s something!”
Myers didn’t treat that line like a throwaway. It’s the hinge in the whole story. It captures the exact second a casual family outing becomes a “hold on – what is this?” moment.
Adam later told Myers the find felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and he didn’t sound like someone being dramatic for TV. He sounded like someone still trying to process how a normal break on the river could turn into something that would end up on display for strangers to stare at under museum lighting.
He called it “a once in a lifetime experience,” adding that it probably wouldn’t happen again and that it felt special for their family to have found it.
The Expert Who Realized Just How Rare It Was
One of the most interesting parts of Myers’ report is that the Coleman family didn’t immediately rush the fossil to an expert. They sat on it for about a year, which, in a strange way, makes the story feel more believable. People don’t always know what to do when they find something huge, old, and complicated, especially if they’re not professionals.
Eventually, they found the right person to talk to: Dr. Andrew Gentry at the Gulf State Park Learning Campus, according to Myers.
And Gentry’s reaction set the tone for just how unusual this was. He told Myers it was an “absolutely extraordinarily rare occurrence” to get an intact fossil leatherback shell like the one the Colemans found, and he described it as “beyond one in a million.”
That’s not the kind of language scientists usually lead with unless they mean it, and Myers made it clear that Gentry wasn’t just casually impressed – he gathered a team and began the kind of excavation effort that suggests this fossil wasn’t just neat, it was significant.
The fact that it was an intact shell is the key detail here. Fossils are often fragments – pieces, impressions, partial remains. A whole shell is a different level of preservation, and the way Gentry spoke about it in Myers’ report makes it sound like something you can spend a career hoping to see.
Sledgehammers, Drills, And The Moment It Finally Moved
Myers didn’t glamorize the excavation as a gentle brush-and-tweezers operation. This was a heavy, physical job that required tools, time, and a lot of patience, and the Colemans weren’t just spectators.
Adam and Adrienne described the work in plain terms: drilling around it, hammering spikes, and using serious force to free it from the earth. Myers relayed how they said there were people out there with sledgehammers, and Adam remembered the exact moment it finally gave way.
He said he was the one who made it shift and busted it free, and he described the reaction when everyone realized it was finally loose – cheers, relief, and that shared “we actually did it” feeling that comes from a tough job finishing cleanly.
That moment is easy to appreciate even if you don’t care about fossils, because it’s basically the human part of the story: a family that found something impossible, then helped do the hard work of getting it out safely.
And then came the next problem: how do you move something like this once it’s out?
A One-Ton Fossil And A Boat That Nearly Tipped
Myers reported that the fossil weighed roughly one ton, which turns transportation into its own little crisis. The Dauphin Island Sea Lab loaned a boat to help move it, and the way Adam described loading it made it sound like a real-life physics lesson happening in slow motion.
He told Myers that when they finally got it on the bow of the boat, the back of the boat was literally lifting out of the water. The fossil’s weight shifted everything forward so dramatically that they had to work it down into the bottom of the boat just to get the motor back into the water and make the boat usable again.
That’s one of those details that makes the story stick, because it’s both funny and tense at the same time. You can imagine the moment where everyone is staring at the boat like, “We solved the fossil problem, but now we might have created a sinking problem.”
And yet, they got it secured, and once it was safe, the scientific part of the story got even bigger.
32 Million Years Old And Not Even A Known Species
After the fossil was moved and protected, Myers reported that Dr. Gentry reached out to paleontologists around the country to determine the fossil’s age, and the answer came back staggering: 32 million years old.
That number is hard to truly feel in your bones, because everyday life doesn’t include anything that old. A century feels old to most people. Two centuries feels ancient. Thirty-two million is a different category of time entirely – older than human history, older than most things we can easily imagine, sitting there under a riverbank until a teenager noticed “a weird rock.”
Then Myers added the detail that turns this from “rare fossil” into “science headline”: it wasn’t just an old leatherback shell. Experts determined it belonged to a never-before-discovered species and genus of leatherback sea turtles.
That means this wasn’t simply confirming what scientists already knew existed. It was expanding the map – adding a new name to the record and, in a small way, rewriting what experts understood about these ancient sea turtles.
That’s the moment where the family’s find stops being “cool” and becomes genuinely important.
A Name Chosen On Ancestral Homeland
Myers also highlighted how the fossil’s location mattered culturally, not just scientifically. Because the fossil was found on Creek ancestral homeland, members of the Poarch Creek Tribe were given the opportunity to name the species in their native Muskogee language.
That part of the story gives the discovery a deeper kind of meaning, because it ties the fossil to the place in a way that goes beyond coordinates on a map. It’s not just “found in Alabama.” It’s “found on land with a long human history,” and the naming reflected that.
Myers explained that the name translates to “water” and “turtle,” and the full scientific name given in the report is Ueloca colemanorum, pronounced roughly like “Wee-low-juh kohl-man-or-um.”
There’s something fitting about that: a fossil that sat hidden for millions of years is named in a language connected to the land it was found on, and the family name is woven into it too, tying science and story together in one label.
From Riverbank Surprise To Birmingham Display
By the end of Myers’ report, the fossil’s journey had a final destination: it’s now on display in Birmingham at the McWane Science Center, where people can see it without having to stand on a cold riverbank and squint at strange rocks.
That’s another big shift worth sitting with. This started as a family’s casual habit—walking around during a fishing trip – and ended with a museum exhibit and national-level scientific interest.
And you can hear how it changed them, even in small lines. Myers showed the family already sounding eager to get back out there again, with the kids basically saying “yes” without hesitation when asked if it made them want to hunt more fossils.
It’s hard not to smile at that part, because it’s the most natural response in the world: once you’ve experienced a real discovery, the world doesn’t look the same. Every riverbank starts to feel like it might be hiding something.
Why This Story Sticks With People
What makes this story land isn’t just the age of the fossil or the fact it might be a new species. It’s the chain of ordinary moments that led to something extraordinary: a family doing what they love, a kid noticing something odd, a year of waiting, then an expert stepping in and confirming it was as rare as it felt.
There’s also a quiet lesson in it that Myers doesn’t have to spell out: a lot of “big” discoveries don’t happen in fancy labs. Sometimes they happen because someone is outside paying attention, and because they care enough to ask the next question instead of walking past.
And if you’re the kind of person who thinks science is something that only happens in textbooks, this story pokes a hole in that idea. A teenager in Alabama helped bring a 32-million-year-old creature back into the modern world, and now experts – and museum visitors – get to learn from it.
That’s a pretty wild payoff for a fishing trip.
Gary’s love for adventure and preparedness stems from his background as a former Army medic. Having served in remote locations around the world, he knows the importance of being ready for any situation, whether in the wilderness or urban environments. Gary’s practical medical expertise blends with his passion for outdoor survival, making him an expert in both emergency medical care and rugged, off-the-grid living. He writes to equip readers with the skills needed to stay safe and resilient in any scenario.
