More than a year later, Adam happened to see a news article about a paleontologist in south Alabama named Dr. Andrew Gentry. Adam contacted Dr. Gentry and asked if he would be willing to visit the site to try and identify what the family had found. Although skeptical, Gentry agreed. “When I saw the fossil for the first time, it was hard to believe what I was seeing,” said Gentry. “It was absolutely breathtaking.” Gentry, whose research focuses on the fossil turtles of Alabama, realized that the Colemans had uncovered the fossilized shell of an ancient leatherback sea turtle. 

According to Gentry, “leatherback sea turtles are unique for having a shell made up of a mosaic of tiny bones called ossicles instead of the broad, flattened plates typical of most turtle shells. When leatherback turtles die, the collagen that holds the ossicles together quickly decays and the mosaic falls apart. This makes intact fossil leatherback shells exceptionally rare.” 

Later that day, Gentry reached out to his colleague Jun Ebersole, a paleontologist and the Director of Collections at McWane Science Center in Birmingham, AL, to discuss the significance of the find. Gentry and Ebersole spent the next few months putting together a team of researchers from McWane Science Center, the Geological Survey of Alabama, Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Alabama Aquarium, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Corp to assist in retrieving the fossil. After the recovery effort, the enormous fossil was carefully transported to a research lab where Gentry and Ebersole assembled a group of scientists to clean and study the specimen. 

The researchers determined that the fossil dated to the early Oligocene Epoch (~32 million years ago), represented a new genus and species of leatherback sea turtle, and was one of the most intact leatherback turtle shells known from the Western Hemisphere. One of the members of the research team, Kimberly Gregson, is a Tribal Member of Poarch Creek Indians, and because the fossil was recovered from an area that is part of the Creek ancestral homeland, it was decided that this new leatherback turtle should be partly named in the Creek language of Muscogee (spelled in traditional Creek as “Mvskoke”). First Generation Decedent Samantha Martin with the Poarch Creek Indian’s Calvin McGhee Cultural Department, and Dr. Marcus Briggs-Cloud, Muscogee Speaker, worked with the researchers to create the genus name Ueloca (pronounced Wee-low-juh) which comes from a combination of the Muscogee words “Uewa” (pronounced Wee-wah) meaning water and “Locv” (pronounced Low-juh) meaning turtle. 

“This is the first fossil to carry a Muscogee name and it’s exciting to see our language recognized in this way. Opportunities like this weave our voice into history and ensure it’s never forgotten,” said Samatha Martin, Creek Language Coordinator for the Poarch Creek Indians. “I’d like to thank Dr. Gentry for allowing the Tribe to be a part of this unique experience and extend a special thank you to Dr. Marcus Briggs-Cloud for his advice and expertise in the early stages of this project.” 

The species name, “colemanorum” honors the Coleman family for their initial discovery of this fossil and their subsequent help with its recovery.. 

“This is truly a one-in-a-million fossil,” said Ebersole. “Specimens like this one are why Alabama is quickly becoming a globally recognized hot-spot for fossil diversity.”