Please consider joining Pacific Paleontology and CA State Parks for this fun family fossils walk back in time to the Pliocene Era a few million years into the past.  Free.  https://ranchodeloso.org/events/.

HAPPY NATIONAL FOSSIL DAY MONTEREY BAY 2024 FROM PACIFIC PALEONTOLOGY!

HAPPY NATIONAL FOSSIL DAY MONTEREY BAY 2024 FROM PACIFIC PALEONTOLOGY!

Grandicrepidula princeps, the Princess Slipper snail.

 

Good morning from Pacific Paleontology.  Here’s a recent 3-D scan we made of a fossil giant Grandicrepidula princeps, the Princess Slipper snail.  3D scanning has gotten a lot easier today, and we made this one with a simple app for iPhone called Photo Catch.  It took about 2 minutes to create from video and the app also has a Mac Desktop version and we use it frequently for these projects.  And even though I say the worms are parasites in the video, I'm not sure they actually caused the snail any harm; they may thus just be commensal as well.  Enjoy.

Screen washing sediments for macro- and micro-fossils

The end of our screen washing season is drawing to a close here at Pacific Paleontology with the approaching Winter rains here in Santa Cruz.  This is one of the Pliocene 4-5 million year old samples that we are running through our screen processing this week. 

A Three Dollar Morning

 

These are fossil Dendraster ashleyi or Dendraster gibbsii Sand Dollars from the

Purisima formation Here.  They are embedded in their original tomb along with

ghost shrimp burrows on the beach. These are about 5 million years old and I'm about

to extract them. Alright, here they are after I extracted them from their watery, sandy

tomb, they've been released to go back and be free again.  Back to the lab to be

prepared to go to the museum. Here we go.  This is back at our labs preparing the

sand dollars for their trip to the museum. Using glues (adhesives) and consolidants

(which are preservatives).  First we remove the sand from the sand dollars.  And the

sand has entombed them, like I said, for the last 5 million years.  And once that sand is

completely removed and brushed off, we'll apply a protective coating of consolidant

to harden the sand dollars which we're doing here.  Thanks for watching and enjoy

these beauties.  It was a three dollar morning.

#Paleontologist, #paleontology,  #SantaCruz, #Monterey, #santacruzcounty, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #beachfossils, #fossil, #fossilhunting, #fieldwork, #beachcombing, #santacruzmuseum, #MontereyBay, #SCMNH, #universityofcaliforniamuseumofpaleontology, #UCMP, #californiaacademyofscience, #academyofscience,  #ucmpberkeley, 

False Alarm

 

Pacific Paleontology was recently called out to one of our paleo mitigation contract sites with the message that "bones have been found"!!  We excitedly arrived only to find this!  Neither paleontological nor archeological these bones, which were inadvertently moved from their original positions by the construction crew, are from a modern (Recent) Mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus and so not of historical importance for our team.  #paleontology, #SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #Monterey, #montereycounty, #paleontology, #mitigationpaleontology, #fossil, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting, #archeology, #bones, 

“From the Ancient Sea, to the Rock, to the Lab, and Onward to the Museum”

 

This is WT967; the extinct sand dollar Dendraster ashleyi (Arnold, 1907) or Dendraster gibbsii (Rémond, 1863).  Discovered in May 2024 embedded in its 5 million year old sandy seafloor tomb, now turned to stone on a Santa Cruz beach, this specimen has been prepared and is on on its way to the Department of Invertebrate Geology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco as a small component of our scientific research into the paleontology and evolution of life in the ancient Monterey Bay.  We are additionally examining the Pliocene current-protected sediments from under these ancient sand dollars for microscopic fossilized plankton called foraminifera to help us refine the age and environments that these faunas represent.  Very exciting ongoing research happening here at Pacific Paleontology Labs.