Eighteen million years ago, there was no Chesapeake Bay. Yet an amazing diversity of creatures—including the giant megatooth shark megalodon (Otodus megalodon)—lived in the shallow sea that covered this region during the geological epoch known as the Miocene.
To learn more about how this ancient ecosystem functioned, and what insights it provides into the Chesapeake’s future, I spoke with Dr. Stephen J. Godfrey. He is the Curator of Paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, and a leading expert on the Miocene fossils found at nearby Calvert Cliffs. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
For those who don’t know, what are Calvert Cliffs and why are they unique?
For me, Calvert Cliffs are the most beautiful thing along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. They extend intermittently for the length of Calvert County, Maryland, for about 35 miles.
...every year new kinds of fossils that are found nowhere else in the world are found locally along Calvert Cliffs.
The cliffs are chock full of fossils. It’s a super, super important place for paleontologists who want to know about what was happening during the Miocene on the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The sediments in the cliffs were laid down between approximately 18 and 8 million years ago. It’s a portal that gives us a view of what this wonderful Miocene biota was like.
What was it like in the Chesapeake region during the Miocene?
Just like today there was change; the planet is always dynamic. There was no Chesapeake Bay yet, and the Delmarva Peninsula did not exist. But you had a well-oxygenated marine environment with a host of more than 600 different kinds of animals, from plankton to whales to giant creatures like megalodon.
The fossils show amazing diversity—over 400 different kinds of mollusks, 50 kinds of sharks, 29 kinds of turtles, crocodiles, pelagic [seafaring] birds, even flamingos were here. There were seals, over 30 species of dolphins, and 10 different kinds of baleen whales. On land there were peccaries, tapirs, rhinos, horses, big cats, hyena-like dogs, and a big predator called Amphicyon, the bear-dogs. At least three species of elephants were here, as well.
You would think after 200 years of collecting fossils, we would know everything there is to know about the diversity of life that existed here during the Miocene epoch, but every year new kinds of fossils that are found nowhere else in the world are found locally along Calvert Cliffs.
I know a lot of people are really interested in megalodon.
Yes, everyone wants to find the big teeth from megalodon. The largest that have been found along Calvert Cliffs are just over 6 inches long. I’m waiting for someone to find a 7-inch tooth. Prior to moving to the area and becoming the curator, I imagined that the cliffs were all sand, you could just pull out megalodon teeth. But they’re not that abundant. The people who find them really put in the time hunting.
Knowing that megalodon and most of these creatures no longer exist, what perspective does it give you on our current moment and the future of life in this region (and others)?
My goal is to reconstruct and learn as much as I can about what it was like, and to spark the imaginations of as many people as I can. How exciting life has been through the ages from then to now!
We lament extinction. I lament extinction. I think about the vaquita, which is a porpoise that lives in the Gulf of California that’s on the verge of extinction, or the Yangtze River dolphin, which is considered recently extinct. These are near and dear to my heart because I study fossilized dolphins. And I’m grieved by that extinction.
It’s been said we are entering a new mass extinction event, and it can create a lot of anxiety. But so far on Planet Earth, life has always come back, and it continues to flourish. So, for me, there is always hope.
In the short term, we are losing natural spaces and fouling our own nest. We’re not being as smart as we could be. But when I step back and take an ancient Earth perspective, there have been mass extinctions before. There will be mass extinctions in the future. We might be the prime agents for the one happening right now. We might not be doing as well as we could be doing, for sure. But evolution is ultimately the antidote to even our folly.
You said the fossils at Calvert Cliffs represent a roughly 10-million-year period of time. Is there one slice of time in particular that you would love to go back and experience?
I would love to see them all. My job is to give voice to fossils, because they can’t speak for themselves. We have this remarkable treasure along Calvert Cliffs. My goal is to reconstruct and learn as much as I can about what it was like, and to spark the imaginations of as many people as I can. How exciting life has been through the ages from then to now!
We also have some amazing things alive today. We shouldn’t think we’ve missed out on the most amazing things that have happened on planet Earth. They’re happening right now. Let’s appreciate and enjoy it.
I love the idea of fossils telling stories.
Many of these animals left little clues for us, and we live at a time where we have the leisure and luxury of being able to study these things. For example, we still don’t know what megalodon looked like overall. We know what kind of teeth it had, and some vertebrae, and we can make an educated guess at its overall shape. We will know more in the future.
No young person should think that everything that could be learned has been learned. That’s absolutely not the case. We have new fossils in the museum that I will not get to in my career. The easiest analogy is a book with most of the pages torn out, and as we discover new fossils or apply new techniques, we can insert some of the missing pages back into that book. The story becomes clearer. We will never get to the point where we have all the pages, but it’s so much fun trying.
How could someone see or learn more about the fossils at Calvert Cliffs?
All of the cliffs are either privately owned or owned by the state or Calvert County. You cannot excavate into the cliffs. But there are a few places where you can pick up fossils on the beach. [Resources on public access can be found on the Calvert Cliffs State Park website.]
We have a great paleontology display at the museum, and we do have a fossil club and fossil newsletter that is published four times a year. You can find the archives on our website as well as a field guide of fossils. We also host public lectures, and you can keep an eye out for next year’s events on the website.
