What's the Bag Limit on Xiphactinus?

October has a lot of opportunities for hunting big game such as deer and elk. Some people use muzzleloader firearms or bows and arrows. I prefer to use my trusty walking shovel, Winona.

Fishing for the biggest toothiest one out there

This October I led a small field crew out to the Niobrara Chalk of Western Kansas, squeezing a week of scouting in between seminars and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Minneapolis. Due to injury, this was my first time out on the rocks since August. The Kansas chalk is full of some amazing fossils like Pteranodon, Tylosaurus, and my personal favorite, Martinichthys. It also has Xiphactinus.

Finding a piece of Bonnerichthys while wearing a Bonnerichthys shirt

By Wednesday morning of the trip, we had found a few cool specimens like a pathological tail fin from an ichthyodectid fish, but nothing large or truly impressive. As my crew packed up some of their gear at the truck, I struck out for a distant outcrop that I could see the distinctive Marker Unit 5 layer (home to Martinichthys). Less than half of the way there, I looked down and froze.

Fish face as found, curatorial hand for scale

Eroding out of the small exposure of chalk is the perfectly articulated face and pectoral fin of a moderate sized Xiphactinus. The amazing thing is the up side of the fossil was all still articulated. Usually when the animal decays on the seafloor, the top side gets stirred around a bit by scavengers. The bottom part, pressed into the seafloor ooze, is usually even better.

Evan and Jordan opening the site to see what's there

Before touching it I grabbed the team. They were from our 3D department and were getting some well deserved away-from-screen time. This past year I worked with them on so many excellent dinosaur, mosasaur and crocodilian reconstructions that some fresh air and exercise seemed like a great respite. And what better way to get fresh air and exercise than with digging up a giant fish? I told them I found another Xiphactinus and they only groaned a little. When they got to the untouched site, I think they got a little excited. It's not every day you have the chance to work on a beautiful fossil like this one.

Undercutting process begins

When you're big and dead and bloated floating at the surface of the Western Interior Seaway, you make a really nice meal for all kinds of predators in the late Cretaceous. After a little excavation (the site had maybe 3 inches of overburden on it), we determined that all that remained of this fish was the disembodied head, fins, and a few vertebrae. The rest of the fish was long ago consumed by some lucky shark I think. That made our jacketing job so much easier, as this was originally a 12 foot long fish.

The jacket is finished!

I was very nervous about the flip of this large jacket in very loose and friable chalk. I broke out every trick I could think of to ensure success but the lift and flip was extremely stressful. Luckily, 27 years of experience paid off and the flip went perfectly! We lightened the jacket by removing a little of the extra chalk, then loaded it into the back of the field truck to bring back to Colorado. The naming scheme this year is due to a song I had stuck in my head, so they all flow from a stream of consciousness rant during the song "A Shogun Named Marcus" by the band Clutch. This being the 4th good fish I found this year, it gets the name "Spitfire", which I think suits it just fine.

I managed to get 2.5 out of the 3 of us in this shot. Successful flip!

All in all, it was a very successful expedition to the Niobrara. No pterosaurs or giant lizards, but a big fish head and another specimen worthy of publication is still a good haul. Stay tuned for more updates as we get to preparing Spitfire's fish face back in the lab.