Post by bennyp81 on Jun 23, 2005 9:35:54 GMT -8
Roberto
User ID: 9161143 Apr 19th 2:35 AM
Toll road yields fossil traffic jam
Discoveries include first mammal from the time of the dinosaurs found on West Coast.
By PAT BRENNAN
The Orange County Register
FOSSIL FIND: Paleontologist and park ranger Lisa Babilonia shows off mastodon tusks dating back 10,000 to 14,000 years. They were recovered during construction of the Eastern Toll Road.
MINDY SCHAUER, THE REGISTER
The tiny, shrew-like creature might have scratched out a precarious existence along an ancient shoreline, doing its best to dodge hungry dinosaurs.
Today, more than 70 million years later, the tiny beast has won an impressive distinction: It is the first mammal from the time of the dinosaurs ever found on the U.S. West Coast.
The little mammal is part of a spectacular cache of fossils unearthed during construction of Orange County's 22-mile Eastern Toll Road, which has two legs cutting through the Santa Ana Mountains from Anaheim Hills to Rancho Santa Margarita.
After years of sorting and tagging, the scientists who followed the earthmovers have begun to share their finds:
Fragments of at least two dinosaurs, one from as far back as 90 million years.
A trove of fossils, among them camel-like animals the size of dogs, from 18-20 million years ago, when coastal Southern California was a broad, tree-filled river delta.
Saltwater "sea cows," one with forward-projecting tusks, from 10 million years past.
Mammoths, giant ground sloths and an enormous, extinct lion - among the old favorites from 10,000 to 14,000 years ago that have turned up before in Southern California.
"The whole project has got tons of these 'first' records, or 'oldest' records, or 'first North American' records," said Bruce Lander of Paleo Environmental Associates, the principal investigator on the project. "They're just all over the place. It's amazing."
They even include Orange County's first fossil primate, a primitive tarsier-like creature that lived 40 million years ago.
Toll-road officials say the best of these fossils will be cleaned up and placed on public display, probably in January at Santa Ana's Old Courthouse Museum.
Most fossil digs involve small patches of land widely separated. The toll roads cut trenches miles long through fossil-rich rock strata.
That allows scientists to find long sequences of fossils in both time and space, catching glimpses of entire ecosystems from the past. The Eastern Toll Road fossils include some 20,000 fragments of animals and plants.
"If I were going out collecting in all of Orange County, and I had infinite money, I would do something like this," said Steve Conkling, a paleontologist at LSA Associates who is familiar with the Eastern Toll Road fossils.
But the consultants who dug out the fossils had to work quickly. Fossil digs sponsored by research grants can take months, even years, while the "salvage" paleontology practiced on the toll roads can take days - and usually no more than a few hours – to avoid disrupting construction work.
"It's sometimes referred to as 'pluck and run,'" Lander said. "But we're getting things we never would have found without the project."
The Transportation Corridor Agencies have provided $119,000 to care for the collection, clean and prepare specimens and place some of it on public display.
"The beautiful thing about this collection is, it represents almost a complete swath, if you will, of the county's stratigraphy," said John D. Cooper, a geology professor at California State University, Fullerton, who is in charge of managing the Eastern Toll Road fossils.
The little mammal from the dinosaur era consists of nothing more than a toothless fragment of jaw. Just which species, or even which family of mammals it belongs to, is unknown, though a shrew or opossum are among the early guesses. Further identification will have to await scrutiny by specialists.
The tiny mammal probably floated out to sea after it died.
The same was probably true for the dinosaurs, one of them a hadrosaur or duck-billed dinosaur. A handful of these crest-headed plant eaters, among the dinosaur species alive at the close of the dinosaur era, have been found in the county. They are the only dinosaurs found here so far.
Many of the toll-road fossils come from perhaps 42 million to 18 million years ago, paleontologists say, when the county was part of a vast, tree-studded river delta populated by bizarre creatures. They include extinct forms that died out tens of millions of years before humans evolved. Among the Eastern fossils from this era: an oreodont, something like a cross between a pig and a sheep, that likely moved in herds.
Fast forward to 10 million years ago, and the county is again an ocean margin, with islands offshore and beaches populated by an outlandish assortment of marine mammals - including whales, sea lions and creatures that resembled walruses and sea cows.
By 12,000 years ago, the county was much like it is today. Humans were either already present or soon to invade, though the land still harbored giant ground sloths and mammoths.
Scientists likely have decades of work ahead of them to classify all the toll-road fossils, and to read as many clues from them as possible.
"I think this is the best of the toll roads," said Mark Roeder, a Paleo Environmental Associates scientist who supervised most of the digging. "It will be a really nice collection for Orange County."
User ID: 9161143 Apr 19th 2:35 AM
Toll road yields fossil traffic jam
Discoveries include first mammal from the time of the dinosaurs found on West Coast.
By PAT BRENNAN
The Orange County Register
FOSSIL FIND: Paleontologist and park ranger Lisa Babilonia shows off mastodon tusks dating back 10,000 to 14,000 years. They were recovered during construction of the Eastern Toll Road.
MINDY SCHAUER, THE REGISTER
The tiny, shrew-like creature might have scratched out a precarious existence along an ancient shoreline, doing its best to dodge hungry dinosaurs.
Today, more than 70 million years later, the tiny beast has won an impressive distinction: It is the first mammal from the time of the dinosaurs ever found on the U.S. West Coast.
The little mammal is part of a spectacular cache of fossils unearthed during construction of Orange County's 22-mile Eastern Toll Road, which has two legs cutting through the Santa Ana Mountains from Anaheim Hills to Rancho Santa Margarita.
After years of sorting and tagging, the scientists who followed the earthmovers have begun to share their finds:
Fragments of at least two dinosaurs, one from as far back as 90 million years.
A trove of fossils, among them camel-like animals the size of dogs, from 18-20 million years ago, when coastal Southern California was a broad, tree-filled river delta.
Saltwater "sea cows," one with forward-projecting tusks, from 10 million years past.
Mammoths, giant ground sloths and an enormous, extinct lion - among the old favorites from 10,000 to 14,000 years ago that have turned up before in Southern California.
"The whole project has got tons of these 'first' records, or 'oldest' records, or 'first North American' records," said Bruce Lander of Paleo Environmental Associates, the principal investigator on the project. "They're just all over the place. It's amazing."
They even include Orange County's first fossil primate, a primitive tarsier-like creature that lived 40 million years ago.
Toll-road officials say the best of these fossils will be cleaned up and placed on public display, probably in January at Santa Ana's Old Courthouse Museum.
Most fossil digs involve small patches of land widely separated. The toll roads cut trenches miles long through fossil-rich rock strata.
That allows scientists to find long sequences of fossils in both time and space, catching glimpses of entire ecosystems from the past. The Eastern Toll Road fossils include some 20,000 fragments of animals and plants.
"If I were going out collecting in all of Orange County, and I had infinite money, I would do something like this," said Steve Conkling, a paleontologist at LSA Associates who is familiar with the Eastern Toll Road fossils.
But the consultants who dug out the fossils had to work quickly. Fossil digs sponsored by research grants can take months, even years, while the "salvage" paleontology practiced on the toll roads can take days - and usually no more than a few hours – to avoid disrupting construction work.
"It's sometimes referred to as 'pluck and run,'" Lander said. "But we're getting things we never would have found without the project."
The Transportation Corridor Agencies have provided $119,000 to care for the collection, clean and prepare specimens and place some of it on public display.
"The beautiful thing about this collection is, it represents almost a complete swath, if you will, of the county's stratigraphy," said John D. Cooper, a geology professor at California State University, Fullerton, who is in charge of managing the Eastern Toll Road fossils.
The little mammal from the dinosaur era consists of nothing more than a toothless fragment of jaw. Just which species, or even which family of mammals it belongs to, is unknown, though a shrew or opossum are among the early guesses. Further identification will have to await scrutiny by specialists.
The tiny mammal probably floated out to sea after it died.
The same was probably true for the dinosaurs, one of them a hadrosaur or duck-billed dinosaur. A handful of these crest-headed plant eaters, among the dinosaur species alive at the close of the dinosaur era, have been found in the county. They are the only dinosaurs found here so far.
Many of the toll-road fossils come from perhaps 42 million to 18 million years ago, paleontologists say, when the county was part of a vast, tree-studded river delta populated by bizarre creatures. They include extinct forms that died out tens of millions of years before humans evolved. Among the Eastern fossils from this era: an oreodont, something like a cross between a pig and a sheep, that likely moved in herds.
Fast forward to 10 million years ago, and the county is again an ocean margin, with islands offshore and beaches populated by an outlandish assortment of marine mammals - including whales, sea lions and creatures that resembled walruses and sea cows.
By 12,000 years ago, the county was much like it is today. Humans were either already present or soon to invade, though the land still harbored giant ground sloths and mammoths.
Scientists likely have decades of work ahead of them to classify all the toll-road fossils, and to read as many clues from them as possible.
"I think this is the best of the toll roads," said Mark Roeder, a Paleo Environmental Associates scientist who supervised most of the digging. "It will be a really nice collection for Orange County."