In 1867, amateur paleontologist Jay Terrell was digging into the Sheffield Lake cliffsides. Collecting fossils from the Ohio Shale Formation, he discovered many large, strange imprints. Within Lake Erie's fossil layers, Brachiopods, Crinoids, Horn Coral, and Trilobites are common; Terrell's fossils, however, were something new.

From large, bony plates to rigid, round eye rings and thick, wedged jaws, the fossilized remains were fish-like and alien. Donating them to the Ohio Geological Survey, the Dunkleosteus was formally discovered. Named after David Dunkle. curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (meaning "Dunkle's bone"), specimens were later uncovered worldwide. Dunkelosteus findings have since been separated into ten tentative species.

Most of Terrell's fossils, though, were destroyed only seven years after their recovery--burned beyond recovery within a fire. While several pieces survived, a few of the fossils disappeared, including one sample unlike any other. Theorized to be a much younger specimen and most certainly not from the Devonian period, it vanished only weeks after the fire and long before it could be…