Fossil Fur seals from Northern California, part 1: discovery

Earlier this week saw the publication of my third article, concerning fossil fur seals of the genus Callorhinus from the Pliocene and Pleistocene of Humboldt County in Northern California. This paper has been in the works since 2006; I presented a poster on this topic at SVP in 2007. I did some of the initial research in 2006 and 2007, and after my SVP poster, I tried a couple more drafts of the manuscript - but it, along with a couple of other projects, fell by the wayside until I started graduate school. It wasn't until I had the herpetocetine jaw paper off my plate that I returned to this project, and in may of last year I submitted my completed MS to the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology after three years of intermittent research.

The first page of Boessenecker (2011)

The story really starts in 2004. My buddy Ron Bushell, who helped me identify many of my fossils when I was still in High School, was collecting at a fossil site in Humboldt County, California. At this particular locality, he was looking for large concretions from the Rio Dell Formation which occasionally bear beautiful scallops (Patinopecten) the size of dinner plates, and incredible 6-10" long gastropods.

Ron and his collecting partners walked down the riverbank looking for nodules bearing mollusks, and thought he had hit the jackpot when he found a large nodule, about 2 feet in diameter, just sitting there in the gravel bar. Now, Ron is an experienced nodule collector - he's spent a lot of time collecting nodules with mollusks from the Pliocene and Pleistocene of Humboldt County, and Eocene crabs from Oregon and Washington.

So, if you're a nodule collector, naturally you take out a sledge hammer and attempt to destroy the concretion. Many concretions have nothing in them, and it is better to crack them in the field rather than lug them home and find out later (at some crab localities, Ron knows well enough which concretions will have crabs, and which ones won't, and packs them all out, and cracks them in his garage). Well, he broke this concretion open, and instead of white shells being exposed, familiar (but much rarer) brown fragments flew out onto the river bank - he immediately knew that he had found bone.

Initial preparation of the Bushell specimen.

Normally, Ron would keep any vertebrate fossils from this locality, due to their rarity. However, he also noticed a tooth fragment - and he knew he had found something pretty important. So, just like any crab or mollusk fossil, he collected all the pieces, took them home, and glued them all together in his garage, and begun airscribing the fossil.

Continued preparation of the Bushell specimen.

As it turned out, Ron had found two associated lower jaws (left and right) of a small fur seal, preserved beautifully in relief in a large concretion. He posted these photos on the old "Collecting fossils in California" forum, and I was very interested once I saw it. After a few emails, he offered to let me study the specimen - an opportunity I was most excited for.

Finished preparation of the Bushell specimen.

The Bushell specimen as it was when I first saw it.

The following summer, my fiancee (then girlfriend) and I drove out to California for the summer, but took a detour through Oregon and Humboldt County in order to visit Ron and pick up this beautiful specimen. Thanks to Ron's generosity, this fossil was made available to study - and now (finally, five years later) Ron's wish that it be studied finally culminated in my paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Next up - introduction to the "Gilmore Fur Seal", Callorhinus gilmorei.

Boessenecker, R.W. 2011. New records of the fur seal Callorhinus (Carnivora: Otariidae) from the Plio-Pleistocene Rio Dell Formation of Northern California and comments on otariid dental evolution. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31:2:454-467