Olivella's graveyard at Pandora's Cave!

Here is Olivella's Graveyard (now referred to the genus Callianax) at Pandora's Cave, New Brighton State Beach; the first shell bed unconformably overlying the finer sandstone layer immediately below it.  One can see here bivalves such as Leukoma and Macoma, a naticid, perhaps Natica clausa, and the Nassariids Demondia californicus and Nassarius.  Portions of this shell layer, which does not stretch continuously for the entire length of the section and is thus more aptly referred to as a Lag or Shell Bed or Lens, consists partly of concreted shell blobs and loosely concentrated shells in which the gastropods are preserved mostly whole and the bivalves are predominantly broken prior to burial.  Olivella's Graveyard represents a moderately shallow water (27-46m) storm deposit and is one of many dozens of examples of "missing time", or  unconformities, in the evolutionary record of our Monterey Bay where once-existing layers have been eroded away by storms during the Pliocene Period about 3 million years ago, never to be seen again.

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