The Tivola Whale - A Journey from Houston County to the Smithsonian

By Thomas Thurman

Rewritten 04/July/2025

Exploring Georgia's Natural History

Tivola Village and Georgia’s Whales

The village of Tivola once stood in Houston County, it appears on many maps from the early 1900s, but it’s extinct now. The Tivola Train Station once stood about 6 miles east of Perry, where AE Harris Road meets the tracks. This was the shipping point for the local quarry mining the fossil-rich, Tivola Limestone. Since the limestone was shipped from the station with a Tivola tag on it, it was unofficially known as the Tivola Limestone.

This Houston County limestone is still abundant, and still actively mained. It's dense with fossils. It's been confidently dated to 35-million-years-old by abundant Periarchus sand dollars and other fossils. This was one of many periods when sea levels were much higher.

The limestone formed in a warm, fertile sea powered by the strong Suwannee Current, a current strong enough to carve a large canyon (The Gulf Trough) in South Georgia which was backfilled by later erosion. The buried canyon is still there. Houston County’s Tivola Limestone is 150 miles inland from the nearest coast. It has been continuously mined in Houston County for more than a century. Cemex mines it today.

Once known as the Ocala Limestone for similar material in Florida, the Houston County limestone was renamed in 1986 for the extinct village of Tivola when Paul F. Huddlestun and John H. Hetrick showed that it was distinct and unique from the Florida material.

The Tivola Whale came from the Tivola Limestone. The fossil was discovered by miners in 1932. The whale is a Basilsaurus cetoides, the most complete specimen of this species Georgia has yet produced. At up to 60 feet in length this was the first great whale species. It emerged into the fossil record at about 37 million years ago and met extinction at 34 million years ago.

Other whales knew Georgia at the same time. Six largish lumbar vertebrae from a Cynthiacetus maxwell, a closely related species about the same age and maybe 10% smaller, were collected by the Georgia Paleontologist C. Wythe Cook in 1925 from Crisp County. At the Museum of Arts and Sciences and Macon you can see a killer whale sized Durodon serratus skeleton discovered by amateur Bill Christy and recovered in 1973 by UGA’s Paleontologist Michael R. Voorhies from Twiggs County. Both of these whales are members of the basilosaurid family.

An older and more primitive whale, Georgiacetus vogtlensis, was discovered, recovered, and described from Burke County, Georgia. The team included Paleontologists Dr. Richard C. Hulbert and Gale A. Bishop. It’s on display at the Georgia Southern Museum in Statesboro. Known as the Vogtle Whale, some researchers suspect Georgiacetus might be a direct ancestor to the basilosaurids, the teeth are very similar though less complex than basilosaurid teeth. The basilosaurids are widely accepted as the ancestors to all modern whales.

Basilosaurid fossils occur globally, they’re the state fossil for both Alabama and Mississippi, they’re also well known from Egypt. The basilosaurids found extinction 34 million years ago, about a million years after the Tivola Whale lived, but their ancestors populate all the world’s oceans and several rivers.

The Tivola Whale

The Tivola Whale is housed in the Smithsonian and cataloged as #USNM V 13690. This means “United States National Museum, Vertebrate collection, #13690”, all the material, from teeth to vertebrae, share the same catalog number.

In 1936 Remingtin Kellogg, Director of the National Museum of Natural History (The Smithsonian), published the book A Review of Archaeoceti. Archaeoceti means ancient whale. Kellogg was the world’s leading expert on whales, modern and archaic. This book is a wonderfully illustrated, detailed look at their fossils and natural history. It quickly became, and remains, the leading work on cetacean (whale) fossils.

Plate 8 of Kellogg’s whale guide is a photograph of whale teeth & jaws from the Tivola Limestone quarry of Houston County, Georgia. One tooth is a serrated, triangular molar, nearly as large as your hand, evolved to shear meat and bone into manageable portions. These were the teeth of a large, active marine predator equipped to deal with large prey.

When I first encountered this picture, I was intrigued, I live in Houston County. I reached out to Ms. Yolanda Young, a Librarian at the Houston County library branch in Perry. I knew her from doing a few fossil presentations at the library. She replied to my September 14, 2018 inquiry with two 1932 Houston Home Journal newspaper articles.

The Discovery

In September of 1932 miners blasted a fresh exposure of limestone and as the dust settled they discovered the remains of a sea monster.

The Houston Home Journal reported that Professor Leon Smith of Wesleyan College was called to advise the mine, he was soon given permission to remove the fossils due to their scientific value. He recovered a single, amazingly complete, Basilosaurus cetoides.

The September 8, 1932 piece in the Houston Home Journal reported the recovery of “23 sections of vertebrae, several head bones, two large pieces of jawbones with teeth, a large box full of fractions of rib bones, neck vertebra, a large lower vertebra from near the pelvis, bone from the base of the skull, large vertebra from middle of the back, one very large rib bone.” This seems to represent a large portion of the animal’s forward skeleton, a Basilosaurus cetoides possesses a total of 58 vertebra.

The Houston Home Journal article continues by reporting; "Several other portions of pre-historic whales have been found in Georgia, including one poking out of the banks of the Flint River at Cordele when the stream was low in 1925. (This would be the Cynthiacetus collected by C. Wythe Cooke) One at a kaolin mine in Dry Branch in the late 1870s. One at Clinchfield in 1924? The one found in Clinchfield is now at the University of Pennsylvania (written in 1932)."

Additionally, a 1911 paper from the Georgia Geologic Survey reported on fossils of another Basilosaurus cetoides found in limestone near Bonaire just north of where the tracks currently cross Highway 96. This was apparently a single vertebra. As late as 2008 an end-of-tail basilosaurid vertebra was found in Houston County's Oaky Woods by boy scouts during a field trip. More recent whale fossils have also been recovered from Georgia.

The September 1932 report states; "Professor Smith has a neck vertebra and a large lower vertebra from near the pelvis." Is this the cervical (neck) vertebra imaged and reported by Dr. James Ferrari and still held at Wesleyan?

Why Wasn't This Find Published in 1932?

The Tivola Whale was never reported in any science literature.

Typically, a find like this would be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. This creates a lasting record which preserves not only the discovery, but what was learned while studying the fossils.

Then, as now, there was a Georgia Academy of Sciences. Today, the Georgia Journal of Science, which is published by the Georgia Academy of Sciences, would be the logical destination for a find like this. Professor Smith was an active member of the academy. He’d even been celebrated by the academy for soil research. He never published his finds or research on the Tivola Whale. He did plan to reconstruct the whale for display at Wesleyan, but this never happened.

Two newspaper articles from the Houston Home Journal, one in Sept 1932 & the other in November 1932, is the only contemporary record. Thanks again, Yoland Young, your efforts tipped off this exploration. Otherwise, this story would have been lost.

Newspaper articles aren’t considered peer-reviewed scientific publication for good reasons. They exist to sell newspapers, not create a scientific record. Be this as it may, the Houston Home Journal articles are the closest thing we have to an inventory of what Professor Smith recovered.

The failure to publish and create a record in the scientific literature created problems. It led later researchers in 2021 to report 5 associated vertebrae from a single individual along the river near Albany as a most complete Basilosaurus cetoides ever found in Georgia. I have since had an email from one of the authors acknowledging the Tivola Whale as Georgia’s most complete Basilosaurus cetoides.

Unravelling the Past

I reached out to Wesleyan College several times with varying success over the years, but just this year (April 21, 2025) Dr. Jim Ferrari, Professor of Biology at Wesleyan College in Macon, replied that he had a fossil, a vertebra, whose identification and history was unknown to him. It’d been in the Wesleyan inventory longer than he’d been on staff, and its origins were unknown. He forwarded the below images.

I reached out to the Smithsonian, and despite their current struggle with budget cuts, Amanda Millhouse, Acting Lead Collections Manager for Paleontology at the Smithsonian, responded positively. Her efforts greatly helped in unravelling this story.

In a May 20, 2025, email she explains…

“Regarding how it got here, we acquired USNM V 13690 in December 1934 from Leon Smith himself. He had been corresponding with the museum since October of that year and ultimately, we did an exchange with him.”

“In return for the Basilosaurus, we provided Smith with invertebrate fossils to be used for teaching at Wesleyan. I don’t have details on the specifics of what we provided.”

The Current Wesleyan Fossil

I shared Dr. Ferrari’s vertebra images with Ms. Millhouse. She consulted with the Smithsonian’s Curator of Marine Mammals, Dr. Nick Pyenson. He identified it as one of the four posterior cervical (neck) vertebrae of a basilosaurid. However, from photos it can’t be confidently assigned as a Basilosaurus cetoides and there’s no real documentation linking this cervical vertebra to the Tivola Whale and Professor Smith.

That said, the smallish, flat cervical vertebrae aren’t as robust as the whale’s larger vertebrae. They aren’t as frequently preserved. The Houston Home Journal article mentioned a neck vertebra as among the material Smith collected. It would seem very likely that this cervical vertebra held at Wesleyan is the one collected by Professor Smith in 1932. I’d suspect that Smith kept it as a teaching aid. The 1932 and 2025 lists of fossils are provided below, there’s no mention of a neck or cervical vertebrae in the 2025 list.

Resting Safely in the Smithsonian Collection Drawers

Dr. Pyenson at the Smithsonian was kind enough to provide these two images of the Tivola Whale fossils safely resting in their collection storage drawers. In the first image you see famous mandibles and teeth Remington Kellogg imaged for his 1936 publication. Whale researchers across the decades and all over the world have studied that black and white picture, here we see them in color.

You’ll notice that the fossils are broken and the edges are damaged. Most of this is because of the strong current pushing them along the sea floor before they became buried, which would have happened relatively quickly. Part of the damage could be from scavengers.

1932 Houston Home Journal List

In 1932 the Houston Home Journal reported “23 sections of vertebrae, several head bones, two large pieces of jawbones with teeth, a large box full of fractions of rib bones, neck vertebra, a large lower vertebra from near the pelvis, bone from the base of the skull, large vertebra from middle of the back, one very large rib bone.”

Current USNM V 13690 List

Dr. Pyenson reports that USNM V 13690 consists of about 40 items including the following elements: 2 incisors, left and right mandible, vertebral centra (dorsal?), ribs and rib fragments, lumbar vertebrae, and post thoracic (sacral?) vertebrae. I’ve included a few images of mandibles and vertebrae.

The efforts of Ms. Millhouse and Dr. Pyenson at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History are greatly appreciated!

Education

Sadly, Houston County and Georgia educators are generally unaware of the Tivola Whale. You can’t teach what you don’t know. That’s motivation enough to unravel and share this bit of Georgia history. Georgians should get the opportunity to know about contributions Georgia has made to science.

I also appreciate the involvement of Dr. Jim Ferrari from Wesleyan College in this quest, he seems to have found it beneficial. I was included on below email from Dr. Ferrari to the Smithsonian staff. I have included it here with his blessings.

June 28, 2025

Dear Ms. Millhouse and Dr. Pyenson,

Thank you for investigating the story of the Wesleyan College fossil whale and for the photographs of the specimens. I did not initiate this whole search (that was Thomas Thurman - thank you!), but as a Wesleyan professor I've benefited so much from all of this information.

I'll be teaching Evolution again in spring 2026 and I am thinking of turning this whole story into a case study on Georgia geology, history of science, and the evolution of whales from their terrestrial ancestors. I think the Wesleyan connection to this specimen will really pique the students' interest and that we can easily spend a week or more on this topic.

Thank you again,

Jim Ferrari, Ph.D.

Department of Biology

Wesleyan College, Macon, GA

Houston County's village of Tivola is long gone, but the name will linger in Georgia's geologic literature for as long as such research is preserved by the state. Sadly, the Georgia Geologic Survey no longer exists, it was "abolished" in 2004. Still, their published research is available online.

Other scientifically important fossils have come from the Tivola Limestone; smaller whales, a dozen sharks, a terminator pig and even today researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural history in Gainesville are reviewing the snout of a terrestrial herbivore known as an oreodont, which also came from Houston County's Tivola Limestone. The oreodont fossil will represent a scientifically important "earliest report in the southeast" for a well-established genus. It will extend the known range of the animal.

The modern miners at Cemex continue to share with science any unusual fossils they find.

It took 7 years to unravel the history of how fossils from Houston County passed through Wesleyan College and ended up at the Smithsonian, of how they were included in Remington Kellogg’s wonderful publication on the natural history of whales. It was a good journey. Now that it’s complete there are other journeys to make through Georgia’s natural history.

References

Veatch, Otto, & Stephenson, Lloyd William; Geology of the Coastal Plain of Georgia, Geological Survey of Georgia, Bulletin 26, 1911

Pre-Historic Whale Bones Found In Mine Near Perry; Houston Home Journal, Perry, GA, Thursday, 8/Sept/1932

Perry Whale Fossil Only One of Kind in N. America, Houston Home Journal, Perry, GA, Thursday, 3/November/1932 (No author credited)

Kellogg, Remington; A Review of the Archaeoceti, Carnegie Institution, Pub. 20, Published 1936

Huddlestun, Paul F.; Hetrick, John H,;Upper Eocene Stratigraphy of Central & Eastern Georgia, Bulletin 95, Page 24, Georgia Geologic Survey, 1986

Manker, J.P.; Carter, Burchard D; Paleoecology and Paleogeography of an Extensive Rhodolith facies from the Lower Oligocene of South Georgia and North Florida. Society for Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists (Now the Society for Sedimentary Geology) Published in Palaios, 1987, Vol.2, pg. 181-188.

Huddlestun, Paul F; The Oligocene, A Revision of the Lithostratigraphic Units of the Coastal Plain of Georgia. Bulletin 105, Georgia Geologic Survey, Department of Natural Resources Environmental Protection Division. 1993

Hulbert, Richard, Jr. Petkewich, Richard M; Bishop, Gale A.; Bukry David; & Aleshire, David P; A New Middle Eocene Protocetid Whale (Mammalia: Cetacea: Archeoceti) and associated Biota From Georgia. Journal of Paleontology, Vol.72, No.5, 1998. The Paleontological Society

Uhen, Mark D.; A Review Of North American Basilosauridae, Contributions to Alabama Paleontology, Alabama Museum of Natural History, Bulletin 31, Vol.1, April 1, 2013

Brantley, J. E. (Assistant State Geologist); A Report on the Limestones and Marls of the Coastal Plain of Georgia; Bulletin 21, Georgia Geologic Survey, 1916