Beluga Whale

Vermont designated the beluga whale as its state fossil in 1993. When the state added the woolly mammoth as a second fossil in 2014, the beluga was reclassified as the state marine fossil. The specific specimen behind the designation is the Charlotte Whale, a nearly complete beluga skeleton found in 1849 in Charlotte, Vermont, about 10 miles from Lake Champlain and 150 feet above sea level. Its presence so far from the ocean revealed something important about Vermont's past. A saltwater sea once covered the Champlain Valley.

Beluga whales are still alive today, living in Arctic and subarctic waters. Adults grow up to 18 feet long and weigh up to 3,500 pounds. They are white as adults; calves are born gray and lighten over several years. Unlike most whales, belugas have unfused neck vertebrae, letting them turn their heads side to side. They are highly social and communicate with a wide range of clicks, chirps, and whistles.

The Charlotte Whale is a Pleistocene specimen approximately 11,000 years old. It lived during the time of the Champlain Sea, a post-glacial body of saltwater that occupied the Lake Champlain lowland from about 13,000 to 10,000 years ago, when the land was still depressed from the weight of retreating glaciers. As the land rebounded and the sea drained, the whale died and was buried in marine sediment.

In 1849, workers digging a railroad bed in Charlotte, Vermont turned up the bones of a large marine animal about 10 miles from Lake Champlain and 150 feet above sea level. The find puzzled locals and scientists alike. The skeleton was identified as a beluga whale and dated to the Pleistocene, confirming that the Champlain Valley had once been flooded by a post-glacial saltwater sea. The Charlotte Whale became one of the most significant paleontological discoveries in New England.

Vermont designated the beluga as its state fossil in 1993. In 2014, when the legislature added the woolly mammoth tooth and tusk as a second state fossil, the designations were split. The beluga became the official state marine fossil and the mammoth the state terrestrial fossil. Vermont is the only state in the country with two separate official fossil categories.

The Charlotte Whale was found in 1849 on a farm in Charlotte, Vermont, about 10 miles east of Lake Champlain. Workers digging a rail line for the Vermont Central Railroad struck the bones roughly 10 feet below the surface in what turned out to be ancient marine sediment left by the Champlain Sea. The discovery site sits in the Champlain lowland, one of the few areas of Vermont where Champlain Sea deposits are preserved.

The skeleton is housed at the Perkins Museum of Geology at the University of Vermont in Burlington, where it has been on display for over a century. The museum also holds other Champlain Sea fossils including shells, fish, and marine invertebrates from the same post-glacial period.