This is one of those multidimensional stories with great photos, but slow to load, on my device anyway.
It’s well worth it.
An East Bay (California) Municipal Utilities District ranger in the Mokelumne River Watershed discovered a treasure trove of fossils. There are still things to discover in California.
Sandia Blanca
What a cool article! It’s amazing to think that animals once lived on this continent, then died out and were brought back by humans millions of years later.
Ohio Mom
The link wouldn’t open for me so I googled “Mokelumne Fossils” and watched a couple of local news clips. The paleontologist and geologist who were interviewed were absolutely giddy.
Anyway, on a day like today, good to be reminded how small we and our worries are in the grand scheme of things.
Cermet
Reminds me of a special cave in western Maryland that contains a treasure trove of fossil remains (due to a cave bear) that were like 20 k years old. Read about it as a teen and to this day the location is still a secret know only to the archaeologist who are allowed to work it.
Scout211
We live right near there and have hiked many of the trails around the EBMUD watershed area. It’s exciting that something this wonderful is happening so near us. Usually it’s just campers, water skiers and fishing enthusiasts.
J R in WV
When I was a little kid, I would steal a tablespoon from my mom and dig for treasure in the woods around our house. Never found any.
Then 30 odd years later a neighbor I visited had a ton of “treasure” in his yard and on every flat surface inside. He was a rock collector — and I was hooked. I’ve quit active rock-hounding as an old used-up guy, but also I’m out of space for more rocks. Dan and I collected rocks and visited famous quarries from Maine and North Carolina to Colorado and Wyoming over the years. Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky are all great places to collect crystals and fossils.
So a story like this really fires me up, so great. you never know where you will find great rocks. Gemstones in igneous area, fossils in sedimentary areas, crystals almost anywhere. One of my favorite rocks is a fossil brachiopod (sort of a funny shaped clam type of seashell) that’s hollow with 4 different crystalized minerals inside. I picked it up beside a road cut in Ohio, it was already open but filled with roadside mud. No big deal, until I rinsed it out in a little waterfall across the highway. WOW!!
Can’t imagine finding a huge deposit of giant skeletal fossils, no wonder the ranger was excited once he realized what he was looking at !!
TaMara (HFG)
@J R in WV: The woman who owned the house before me, was a collector – belonged to the geological society in Boulder. When she moved, she left an entire yard of treasures for me. I “hunted” them all down and put them into a rock garden. Still love knowing I am now the caretaker for everything from geodes and crystals to several kinds of fossils in my yard.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I saw an article about this a few days ago. What a great find. It was exciting to read about
Kattails
Thanks for posting this, it will be bedtime reading. I took a lot of geology courses in college, loved it, loved the field work. Of course at that time the mastodons were still roaming around…but they were pretty friendly if you fed them some peanuts.
persistentillusion
@Scout211: I’m in Southern Colorado and have found several small samples of something I was told was the CO state rock. Turns out, there are many “state rocks” , but my small samples of Amazonite (turquoise like, but not actually turquoise) are something I treasure, as thy are all found rocks to me.
ETA, i grew up near the shores of Lake Michigan, and crinoids were still washing up on the beach. Missisipian era. Love the geological history of a region.
StringOnAStick
@J R in WV: As a geology student, brachiopods were my favourite fossil group. Years later I found a spirifid brachiopod (handlebar moustache shaped) that’s brick red in a matrix of dark gray; one of my “inside the house” rocks.
Last Tuesday we drove to the coast and the shells were all pounded to bits but there are a few cool rounded rocks I brought home, one with many holes through it. I’m going to make a dish garden with it and hope I can get moss to grow through the holes.
StringOnAStick
@persistentillusion: Petosky stones? I collected some there and put then in a desk top fountain; so cool to see the fossils when the stones are wet.
Another Scott
Relatedly, the Mammoth Site in South Dakota (south of Rapid City) is well worth a visit.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mary G
When Orange County was making its rapid transformation from rural oranges groves to wall to wall development, they were always digging up amazing bits of fossils. The developers would try to dig them out in the dead of night ASAP so as not to have to stop building. My earliest three protests were at a bank with most of a big cat under it, a Jack-in-the-box that was said to have at least the rib cage of a whale, and a strip mall with Native American artifacts. The developers usually won. The most they had to do was stop for a day or two until some archeological society could find the money to get the stuff the back hoe pulled up hauled away. There was no meticulous measuring, photos, or painstaking brushing the dust off every little toe bone. What a waste.
This find is tremendously important and safe from development, but the reason it was revealed is that our current drought dropped the water in the watershed to record lows.
HeartlandLiberal
The article referenced loaded quickly on my laptop, so maybe Rofer needs an upgrade?
But the web page is poorly designed, making use of all the fancy gewgaws that web designers like to get carried away with, like floating inserts and images that change as you scroll down. Drove me batty.
The information was fascinating, though.
In case any of you have not heard of the other significant recent major fossil find in the Hell Creek formation of upper plains, go to YouTube and watch this video. The researcher has found a fossil record snapshot of the TWO HOURS AFTER THE ASTEROID IMPACT that wiped out the dinosaurs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw5ZHPWRUOg&t=36s