00:02Early morning on Ocean Grove Beach and a race against time and tides to unearth the most complete whale fossil
00:09ever found on the Bellarine Peninsula.
00:11It was found just before Christmas by a family of tourists who alerted Museums Victoria.
00:17I thought, OK, this looks interesting. How are we going to get this out?
00:23The answer? Quickly, but very, very carefully.
00:28We ended up having a really narrow window of around about four good hours.
00:34There were some real hairy moments. I was looking at my clock.
00:39I was looking at the worried faces of the excavator operators.
00:42I thought it's now or never we have to move on this.
00:46Its new home is the Museum's Victoria Research Institute, where scientists can now get a closer look.
00:53These are the ribs more or less in place.
00:56This chunk is actually part of the skull.
01:00Ocean Grove is amazingly one of the very few portals back in time to that episode in Earth's history,
01:09where we get the chance to see what the whales were like, how they were changing as Earth's climate was
01:15changing.
01:16First it will be 3D scanned, then photographed.
01:19Then the slow process begins of chipping away the sandstone to reveal its ancient secrets.
01:26Every day here is a thrill, but even better to share these discoveries with everyone.
01:31It's worth the very long wait.
01:34It's worth the very long wait.
01:34montana picture is still in place.
01:35It's worth the great looking for it.
01:37The customer can be the human being of the human being of friends.
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