Southern California Research Trip, Part 5: Highway 1 and 101

After leaving the Page Museum, we tried our best to get the heck out of Los Angeles. Don't get me wrong, I love fossils from the LA Basin... but I can do without the city. The San Francisco Bay Area is big enough for me, and generally unlike LA, all you need to do in order to find yourself outside of a city setting is drive in nearly any direction away from San Francisco and within 30 minutes you can find yourself in redwood forests, beautiful (and often sparsely inhabited) beaches, oak woodland, or green rolling hills. In LA, that same endeavor could easily take a couple of hours. And as we found out trying to head up towards Malibu from Santa Monica - LA can try its damndest to keep you from leaving, and have you sitting in traffic sucking down someone's exhaust fumes. On the other hand, driving through Malibu was an absolute treat, and that part of the coastline was fairly spectacular - very unlike what the coast looks like central and Northern CA, which has coyote brush, and abundant pampas grass and monterey cypress (and apparently, I've just found out that monterey cypress grows abundantly in New Zealand); the coast along Malibu is instead barren and desert like, much what I would expect the coast of Baja California to look like.

Eventually we reached Santa Barbara, and went to visit the small and quaint Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History; historically speaking, there are two important vertebrate fossil specimens at the SBMNH: the holotype of the early Late Miocene walrus Imagotaria downsi, and the holotype of the gigantic bony toothed bird Pelagornis orri (originally Osteodontornis orri, and also from the same stratigraphic unit - the Sisquoc Formation - as Imagotaria). Previously, at the LACM, Morgan and I had examined casts of the Imagotaria downsi holotype, which I assume is back at the SBMNH collections. After our visit, we stayed the night in the quaint and adorably bizarre Danish-themed hamlet of Solvang, California (did you get the double entendre?). From there, we spent another day up the coast driving through Big Sur, concluding the trip (meaning I had to get back to work).

A rescued Peregrine Falcon at the SDMNH, displayed by someone more concerned with his next break than educating people.

A modern whale vertebra at the SBMNH, damaged from collision with a ship.

A pygmy mammoth (Mammuthus exilis) skeleton from Santa Rosa Island, on display at the SBMNH.

An unpublished and unstudied physeteroid sperm whale whale skull with a really weirdly done reconstruction of the rostrum and facial region. The reconstruction was evidently done by someone unfamiliar with sperm whale cranial anatomy, and a long time ago, at that.

The holotype specimen of Pelagornis orri; both the slab and counterslab are on display.

Above the slab and counterslab, a painted life size reconstruction of Pelagornis orri hangs on the wall, giving visitors an idea of how absurdly large these birds were. And Pelagornis orri is one of the smaller species of pelagornithids; the specimen that Adam Smith and I published would have been even larger, closer to the size of Pelagornis chilensis.

A mounted skeleton of a blue whale; this is one of the better mounts I've seen, and the jaws are (almost) in correct articulation - the mandibular condyle is still a bit far from the squamosal, although the jaws are rotated correctly.

My wife doing her jonah impression.

My wife begged me to go to Ostrich Land when she read about it in the information binder in our hotel in Solvang.

These signs didn't help any feelings of apprehension about our decision.

They pecked at the food bowls really, really hard! As you can see here, it was pretty intimidating.

Morro Rock, at Morry Bay, California: this is a huge, ~600' tall Cenozoic volcanic plug (that's right, Oregon coast: over twice the height of Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach) that juts out into the Pacific Ocean. It's basically a huge tombolo.Elephant Seals at an overlook near San Simeon, California. A bull can be seen hauling out in the center of the photograph.

An neat bridge near the southern end of Big Sur.

The famous waterfall at Julia Pfeiffer State Park in Big Sur. The timing
worked out perfectly to watch the sun go down here, but unfortunately that
meant the rest of the drive was in the dark.

Southern California Research Trip, Part 4: Page Museum at the La Brea tar pits

After our last day of research at NHMLAC, Sarah, Morgan, and I drove to LAX to drop Morgan off for his flight back to the rockies. Sarah and I continued on, and had a two day trip planned ahead: first, we would visit the Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries in Hollywood, and then we'd drive north on Highway 1 from Santa Monica north through Malibu, Oxnard, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo, Big Sur, and eventually through Monterey on our way back to the San Francisco area. We took a ton of great photos at the Page Museum which we arrived at just before opening; I've included some of the better and more informative photos here.

The front of the uniquely designed Page Museum. The museum is shaped like a square with a botanical garden courtyard, and above the museum, a large bas-relief is supported by that scaffolding.

A poor Columbian Mammoth is in deep... stuff.

My wife snapped this photo of tar bubbling up outside the museum. It's amazing how much tar is still seeping up. On my last visit in 2004, I didn't see anything around the park that was half this good; you can clearly see here the leaf litter and detritus that covers and camouflages the tar, while also seeing some obviously viscous, black, cartoon style tar bubbling up.

The famous Pit 91 excavation, which is temporarily on hold during the project 23 excavation a stone's throw away.

One of the panels from the bas relief above the museum, depicting a teratorn confronting a ground sloth.

A Columbian Mammoth skeleton, which I look way too happy to see (considering it's not marine, that is).

One of these things is not like the other ones...

My wife attempting to pull the plunger, showing how damned difficult it is.

The right canine is not the thing that's important in this shot, it's the left canine; although this is not a marine carnivoran, I'm interested in tooth eruption in carnivorans in general, and this made my day.

Skull and life restoration of Merriam's giant condor, Teratornis merriami. Still not as big as Pelagornis, but impressive and terrifying none the less.

Lots and lots of dire wolves (Canis dirus). This has to be my favorite display in the entire museum... it's beautifully constructed.

The spectacularly large and robust skeleton of the American Lion, Panthera atrox.

What? I thought this was the American Lion? Some recent studies have indicated the skull and mandibular morphology of Panthera atrox is more similar to the extant Jaguar (Panthera onca) than it is to African Lions (Panthera leo). There is a conflicting molecular study done with ancient DNA, however, but I'll save that for another time. Here's a question for any readers in the know: who the hell is Naegele? Joseph Leidy named the damn thing after all, so why isn't it named Leidy's Giant Jaguar?

A new American Lion specimen named "Fluffy" was recently excavated, and there was this temporary case which had in it what I thought was one of the better exhibits in the whole place: a three dimensional representation of the skeleton, using the same skeletal elements of a housecat. As a taphonomist, I particularly enjoyed this.

The bubble prep lab at the Page.

I love seeing stuff like this in prep labs. Apparently Arctodus is a patriot.

Is that a walrus in there? Damn, it's just a Smilodon. I really loved this display showing the three dimensional configuration of bones.

Smilodon again.

A bee outside the Page Museum. This has no relevance to the rest of the post, but it is a pretty picture, no?

A composite of two panoramic shots my wife took showing the bas relief.

A great shot taken by my wife of the wall of dire wolf skulls.

Hollywood!

Up next: Southern California Research Trip, Part 5 - detailing the Santa Barbara Museum, the coast, and the conclusion of the series of posts.