This is quite possibly the paleontological find of the century in Santa Cruz, literally! An extinct deep sea brittle star, named over 120 years ago in honor of Santa Cruz; Amphiura sanctaecrucis, found high up in the Santa Cruz Mountains! With gratitude out today to forthcoming coauthors Charles L Powell, John Barron, Sabine Stöhr, and others.
#FossilFriday, #Paleontologist, #paleontology, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #beachfossils, #SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #fossil, #AnoNuevoStatePark, #LosOsos, #SantaCruzMuseumofNaturalHistory,
Sandhills Habitat History Update; another journey back into Deep Time. When I started finding these strange "rocks" as a kid exploring around our ancient ocean Sandhills Habitat here in Santa Cruz, I was curious what they could possibly be, since I suspected they may not in fact be rocks. And they aren't! These are the crushing mouth plate "teeth" of the Sheepshead Wrasse, Semicossyphus sp., which are used to crush clams, crabs, and fish! Interestingly, all sheepshead fish are born female and most mature into males later in life, living up to 21 years of age. They still live in the ocean waters of Monterey Bay today! The next time you find an interesting natural object, it may have a fascinating story to tell you!
And here is an excellent guide to the Sandhills Habitat "Islands" in Santa Cruz County: https://zayantesandhills.com/Zayante%20Sandhills%20Conservation%20Bank%20web/SANDHILLS%20Information.pdf
#FossilFriday, #Paleontologist, #paleontology, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #beachfossils, #SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #fossil
HAPPY NATIONAL FOSSIL DAY MONTEREY BAY 2024 FROM PACIFIC PALEONTOLOGY!
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.
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.
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,
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,
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.
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We are pleased to announce that our firm, Pacific Paleontology, has advanced to the Finals Round in the Monterey Bay Small Business Startup Challenge! We are extremely excited about this opportunity and that our new small business enterprise (SBE) has won this level of accolade and look forward to the potential of moving forward!
https://www.startupmontereybay.com/startup-challenge/
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