In July 2002, an Italian man named Mr Francioni found something strange. Francioni owns a marble-cutting company in the Tuscan town of Pietrasanta, and he had just acquired a block of Egyptian marbleized limestone. After slicing the block into six slabs, he discovered the fossilised bones of an animal within. Fossils weaken the strength of cut stone and many people discard them outright. But Francioni was excited: he thought he had found a dinosaur, and contacted the nearby University of Pisa.

He got through to Giovanni Bianucci. “As soon as I saw the slabs, I realized that the finding was even more important than a dinosaur, at least for me. I study marine mammals,” he says. Bianucci realised that the