No, I haven't been kidnapped and this isn't a cry for help. I'm actually writing positively abut a Xiphactinus specimen. I'm as shocked as you are but these are interesting times.
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| A string of vertebrae and a fin just as found |
How did we get here? In May of 2026 I was scouting a familiar ranch in western Kansas, looking for specimens in the Niobrara chalk in western Kansas. I was wrapping up an already productive trip when at about 4pm on the very last day I walked up on some amazing bones lying on the surface.
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| Anthony Maltese editorializing his discovery |
The caudal fin was exploded, but the articulated vertebrae and very rare complete dorsal fin told me this was an excellent example of the giant fish Xiphactinus audax. I stared at the site a bit trying to imagine the skeleton in a gentle sweep, walked a dozen feet to the southeast, and spotted the very tip of the muzzle - the right premaxilla- just beginning to poke out of the chalk. Did I have the entire thing here, laid out nose to tail? There was no time to say for sure so I put some consolidant on the fragile fins and marked the spot to come back to later. We give nicknames to many of our specimens so they are easier to remember, so I continued my fish naming scheme based on the Clutch song "A Shogun Named Marcus". The next name in the song makes this Xiphactinus get the name "Brown Sugar" and based on the bone color it is apt.
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| Tosha standing at the tail, Christian at the head |
A week goes by and our team heads back out to the site. I woke up the day they were to arrive after I dreamt that there was just a tail and head there, with nothing in between and initially it looked like that was the case, until the crew started following the vertebrae. It was almost all there, with large piles of bones in the torso and head area. The chalk over the skeleton was only a few centimeters deep, so it was very fractured and fragile, so we couldn't take this fish out in one giant jacket. Carefully it was removed in several smaller ones, with no failures or collapsing. Great success!
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| The TPI crew recovering the specimen in jackets |
Back in the lab, preparation started immediately. Fins were exposed, the skull was beautiful and articulated, and the main body jacket held some major surprises. The first was that for the first time that I've ever observed on Xiphactinus, this fish had broken and healed ribs!
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| 4 curatorial fingers pointing at 4 broken ribs |
Most spectacularly, and in keeping in tradition of the insides of Xiphactinus being a great place to find other animals, there was a complete and articulated specimen of the ultra rare fish Micropycnodon kansasensis, staring out of the inside of the fish like the ribs were the bars of a Xiphactinus jail. Naturally this little prey fish got nicknamed "Sweet Potato".
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| The pancake-shaped Micropycnodon, with googly eye |
Preparation of this fish is done for now, and we are deciding how best to display it to show off the coolest features of the specimen. While it's not yet on display, if you ask the right people back at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center, wee would be more than happy to show them off to you.
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| Curator displaying the finished jackets laid out as they were found |
