New Purisima Fm. mysticete skull

As promised, here are some photos of the skull that was discovered on thursday and excavated by the following monday. I apologize for the lack of posts lately; I've been damn busy the last few weeks, wrapping up my first semester of teaching, finishing classes and finals, and getting a lot of typing done; over the weekend I submitted a manuscript (my third now) to the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on some fur seal fossils from Humboldt County, California.

Anyway, Karl Heiman took all these photos and graciously let me pirate them and put them up here. Thanks Karl!

The skull is somewhere down in that trench the excavator dug. I imagine that's Dave Maloney up front, I can see one of the two lead engineers (both pretty cool guys). You can see that this fossil was only about a foot or so down below the wave cut platform; I must have walked right above this thing hundreds of times.

Here's all the bone that was poking out initially. Pretty ugly if you ask me. This is what you have to start with from heavy machinery - it often fractures a small zone of the bone. Waves and the fiercest winter storms are decidedly more gentle, and can expose bones that look nice enough to warrant collection. Nevertheless...

Hey, there's something there, all right! This is one of the first photos I saw of the thing, and I got pretty excited, and nervous; it looked like the trench had cut obliquely across the rostrum.

And further posterior at this stage of the excavation. You can see the occipital condyles to the left; a bit of the right side is gone, and it isn't clear what angle the cut goes to - obliquely to the left across the entire skull, it would seem.

Wow, I'm impressed - the left side of the skull looks beautiful. You can see much of the left maxilla, left frontal, and left squamosal here.

Holy cow! Here's the money shot. This thing is just beautiful! Fortunately, the trench went exactly parallel to the long axis of the skull, and didn't even cut across the rostrum; the anterior tip of the rostrum is intact, and aside from some minor damage to the left maxilla, is more or less complete (on the left side).

Here Dave Maloney (left) and Karl Heiman (right) pose while excavating Karl's beautiful new discovery.


At last, the plaster jacket is on the fossil. Apparently not two minutes after 5:00 Karl and Dave got the jacket on, a large wave came in and filled in the hole, which is now the size of a swimming pool. The specimen is probably now on its way (or already) to the prep facility. Luckily for these guys, the sediment is really soft and separates from the bone easily, and should make for a really easy prep job.

Beautiful new baleen whale skull

Hey Folks,

Thursday evening I received an email from by buddy Karl Heiman, who co-discovered a mysticete skeleton at a seawall construction project last April; the skeleton was headless, but nonetheless is a beautiful find (the excavation was conducted by PaleoResource Consultants and covered here and here). Anyway, on Thursday, as part of the same project, Karl was watching as a backhoe dug a trench, and the bucket chewed right through a rather large bone.

After some careful digging, it turned out to be a nearly complete baleen whale skull - photos he sent me yesterday show what it looked like after it had been entirely excavated in the field: about 5 feet long, and only missing part of the right hand side - the left side of the skull is largely intact. I'll email Karl and ask for permission to use his photos, but otherwise - trust me, it's damn pretty; I almost shed a tear.

Petition to save the UBC track site in New Jersey

An early Jurassic dinosaur track site in New Jersey is currently in danger of being destroyed by development for a new set of high-end condos. The track site is directly adjacent to a park, and if the park boundary is extended only 200 feet, the locality can be preserved for posterity (and I believe *most* or *some* of the condo development can continue as well, so that would be more or less a win-win for both sides).

While many folks don't believe in online petitions, the "Help Save Capitola!" petition catalyzed opposition in 2003 and 2004 to help defeat the seawall that would have been built along the Capitola cliffs; that locality was saved, due in part to the petition I drafted during my freshmen year of college.

Anyway, the petition can be viewed here and signed here. I highly suggest anyone worth their salt as a paleontologist or fossil enthusiast to sign the petition; it broke 1000 signatures friday morning, and as of now, has 1804 signatures.

Summer Adventures Part 3: Dolphin excavation

This story actually begins last winter, on a foul foggy day in Santa Cruz. Actually, the weather was quite nice. Anyway, I had been out prospecting, looking for new fossils, and I wasn't finding much. I was right near where a whale skeleton would be collected several months in the future (see Santa Cruz Whale Excavation). On a small ledge of Purisima sandstone, I found a set of articulated cetacean vertebrae (formerly featured on a quiz). I just about died inside, because part of me knew that short of a miracle, fluke, or a construction project, this skeleton would never get excavated (and I wouldn't dare hack out half of a skeleton).

Dave Haasl, Dave Maloney, and Karl Heiman (from left to right), who found and reported the other skeleton.

Well, you guessed it, I don't really believe in miracles, and I guess it doesn't count as a fluke, so that leaves a construction project. Yes, construction of a seawall has been occurring all summer, and Paleoresource Consultants have had an onsite paleontologist (for once; I believe this is one of the first times a seawall project in Santa Cruz has had any sort of paleo mitigation). I was originally under the impression that the city/county wasn't going to bother.

The fantastic folks from PaleoResource Consultants after the plaster jacket is emplaced.

Luckily for me, they did, and on top of that, footed the bill for the excavation. So, after I checked it out, it was pretty obvious that the vertebral column included the last 3-4 cervicals, all thoracics, and anteriormost lumbar vertebrae all articulated. There were several ribs, and a random mysticete bone (who knows?).

Onsite paleontologists trenching under the monolithic, refrigerator-sized jacket. Ok, squashed washing machine-size.

After the onsite guys did a little more excavating, they found some oddly shaped bones which I identified as the ventral portion of the vomer and the maxilla or frontal. It is possible that the posterior braincase has disarticulated from the skull; the skull (in relation to the vertebral column) is upside down, facing backwards, and separated by about 50cm. The presence of the anterior skull also (most importantly) allowed me to identify it as a medium sized odontocete, rather than a juvenile or small mysticete.

I take absolutely no credit for excavating this (as I didn't, which makes this photograph totally misleading). I simply thought I (at the very least) deserved this photo op since I found it.