“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.

“Boreotrophon and the Importance of Studying Coastal Erosion; Act II”

 

Good morning beautiful Monterey Bay!  This is a 3 million year old fossil of the small marine muricid gastropod genus Boreotrophon, perhaps something close to B. vancouverensis which was first described as a new species by our colleague Shawn Wiedrick et. al. in 2019. This little fellow is known from living specimens today in the colder waters of British Columbia to Alaska. Up until the discovery of this specimen in a rockfall here in Santa Cruz 4 years ago, this species didn’t have a fossil record, if it is indeed this species. More work is necessary to reveal its taxonomic affinities. This discovery is further evidence of the great changes our Monterey Bay has seen over time, perhaps experiencing colder waters in the past, as well as highlighting the importance of conserving and studying our dynamic coastline for what it reveals about the ancient history of our area.  

#Paleontologist, #paleontology,  #SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #beachfossils, #fossil, #fossilhunting, #fieldwork, #beachcombing, #santacruzmuseum, #MontereyBay, #SCMNH, #UCMP, #californiaacademyofscience, #academyofscience,  #ucmpberkeley, #LACMIP, #NHMLA, #newrecord, #newdiscovery, #gastropod,  

"Sand Dollars Under the Sea: Fossil Sand Dollar Extraction and Prep"

 

This is an example of Dendraster ashleyi or Dandraster gibbsii; we believe the two are synonymous.  This is one of the most common fossil sand dollars found in Santa Cruz.  There are some other specimens from our area that look more closely like Dendraster excentricus but those are extremely rare, only two specimens are known, and there is another species in a different genus called Scuttellaster of the species oregonensis that are found more commonly in the south bay but these are beautiful fossils; They are all extinct species, no longer living today, and they are gorgeous to find along the beach especially in the strand line, and just very beautiful.  The genus Dendraster living today out in the Bay form big colonies on the bottom of the ocean if you dive down under surface you can see them there forming a purple carpet, all nestled in the sand at about a 45-degree angle.  Here's one of the living species on the left hand side and on the right is the fossil, probably ancestral to the modern one.

#paleontologist, #paleontology, #SantaCruz #santacruzcounty #pacificpaleontology

Pacific Paleontology #FossilFriday #beachfossils #fossils #fossilhunting

#fieldworkresearch #beachcombing #santacruzmuseum #montereybay

#scmnh #universityofcaliforniamuseumofpaleontology #ucmp

#californiaacademyofsciences #academyofsciences #ucmpberkeley

#lacmip #nhmla #fosssilprep #paleo #purisima #PurisimaFormation #sanddollar

#fosssilprep #paleo #purisima

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.

#Paleontologist, #paleontology, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #beachfossils,

#SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #fossil, #fossilhunting, #fieldwork, #beachcombing, #santacruzmuseum,

#MontereyBay, #SCMNH, #mitigationpaleontology, #universityofcaliforniamuseumofpaleontology,

#UCMP, #californiaacademyofscience, #academyofscience,  #ucmpberkeley, #LACMIP, #NHMLA, #sierraclub, #Monterey, #fosssilprep, #paleo, #montereycounty, #Purisima, #PurisimaFormation, #fossil, #gastropod, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting, #collectingtechniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene, #foundartifacts, #fossilpreservation, #invertpaleo, #vertpaleo, #taphonomy, #FossilFriday

Life's Perfect Circle...

 

I am happy to share that I’m adding a new position as Paleontology Collections Advisor at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History to my schedule! I officially began my career as a paleontologist with the museum 46 years ago now, in 1976 when I was 16. It brings me unparalleled joy to now be working with the museum once again, completing my life's circle with the original institution that I began with all those years ago. https://www.santacruzmuseum.org/

#Paleontologist, #paleontology, #pacificpaleontology, #beachfossils, #SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #fossil, #museum, #fossilhunting, #fieldwork, #beachcombing, #santacruzmuseum, #MontereyBay, #SCMNH, #digitization, #museumcollections, #fosssilprep, #paleo, #fossil, #Research, #career, #share #foundartifacts, #fossilpreservation, #invertpaleo, #vertpaleo, #taphonomy, #fossilcollections, #museumcuration

New record of a previously unknown species from the Pliocene of Monterey Bay!

WY890.1: Turcica brevis was described from the the Pliocene of the Central Valley but this is the first record from Monterey Bay! .

 

“An Example of Remarkably Well-Preserved fossils”

 

Sometimes creatures are preserved astonishingly well that it boggles the mind!  From Dinosaur skin impressions, to frozen mammoths and glass insect fossils, the world of fossil preservation is incredibly bewildering!  And such was the case with the whole, unfilled, baby Arc Clams, Anadara trilineata, shown here.  Preserved so well, without a gap between the two valves of the shell, no ocean sediment filled into the inner area of the shell and the shells are “empty”.  These shells were likely moved very little from their original burial spot, so as to preserve both valves together.  Almost universally, fossil clams are discovered with sediment-filled interiors, meaning they were moved around on the bottom of the sea floor before being buried.  Even clams that are preserved “in-situ” or in life-position are usually preserved with sediment filling inside the two valves, making these clams extremely exceptionally, uber rare.  Additionally, almost universally the surrounding rock exerts a degree of pressure on a fossil and can even break, squish, or completely pulverize the organism.  

These Arc Clams seem to have avoided that.  Clams can live either in the sediment, or infaunal, or on the sediment, or epifaunal, at the bottom of the ocean; the two most common lifestyles–there are others.  This particular species lived just below the sediment-water interface.  Reconstructing the ancient lifestyle of this clam was the focus of one of my earliest research papers as a young paleontologist at U.C. Berkeley back in 1984.  I was able to use the commensal marine Polychaete worm Polydora, which leaves a scar on the shell of Anadara, as a proxy measure to reconstruct the lifestyle orientation of these ancient fossils from 4 million years ago.  Commensalism is when two creatures share an ecological relationship that neither harms (parasitism) nor benefits (symbiosis) the two species involved.  The link to the manuscript, and some of the diagrams used, appear below.

Thompson, W., 1984.  Anadara from the Purisima Formation along the Monterey Bay

#Paleontologist, #paleontology, #pacificpaleontology,

@pacificpaleontology, #beachfossils, #SantaCruz,

#santacruzcounty, #fossil, #fossilhunting, #beachcombing,

#santacruzmuseumofnaturalhistory, #SCMNH,

#universityofcaliforniamuseumofpaleontology, #UCMP, #CAS,

#californiaacademyofsciences, #Monterey, #montereycounty,

#mitigationpaleontology, #Purisima, #PurisimaFormation,

#fossil, #gastropod, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting,

#collectingtechniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene,

#foundartifacts, #fossilpreservation, #taphonomy

Looking into the eye of the next big storm?

Capitola winter storm waves, 1-13-2019;

Engaging others, whether it be students in their classrooms or the public, in scientific dialogue over global-scale natural science topics is one of the great unspoken duties, in my mind, of scientists and educators. And nowhere is that at once easier and more difficult than with climate, and specifically with ocean-atmosphere interactions that manifest in the regular cycles we call “El Nino and La Nina”. These cycles are regulated by changes in, and interactions between, sea surface temperature, rainfall, air pressure and temperature, and ocean and atmospheric circulation. Of course, in conversations with both students in the classroom and friends and family, these processes can be broken down further into basic ideas of volume, mass, density, temperature, pressure, and so on.

The idea of climate and oceanic oscillations doubtless began prior to the 1800’s, but the idea of El Nino/La Nina cycles, at least in the Pacific, started when fishermen on the coast South America, in Peru, noticed warm ocean currents appearing around Christmas time every few years. Referring to the birth of Christ, they nicknamed the events “El Nino”, which is of course “the boy” in Spanish. Fishing here is best in La Nina years, when cold upwelling ocean water drives rich nutrients to the surface from the deep.

An El Niño occurs when surface water in the equatorial Pacific becomes warmer than average and east winds blow weaker than normal. The opposite condition is called La Niña: water that is cooler than normal and the east winds are stronger. El Niños typically occur every 3 to 5 years. NOAA “El Nino and La Nina”

We are currently in an uncommon “Triple La Nina”. Here’s an out take from the journal “Nature”: “The current [2022] La Niña started around September 2020 and has been mild-to-moderate most of the time since then. As of April 2022, it intensified, leading to a cold snap over the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean not seen at that time of year since 1950. “That’s pretty impressive,”…

The latest forecast from the World Meteorological Organization, issued on 10 June, gives a 50–60% chance of La Niña persisting until July or September… NOAA’s Climate Prediction Centre has forecast a 51% chance of La Niña in early 2023.

…this prolonged La Niña, unlike previous triple dips, hasn’t come after a strong El Niño, which tends to build up a lot of ocean heat that takes a year or two to dissipate1. “I keep wondering, where’s the dynamics for this?” …” Nature News, 23 June, 2022

One of the advantages of living so close to the ocean is to be intricately connected to these cycles, and being engaged in one spot, one relatively small chunk of land, for many decades is that one can experience these cycles and feel their presence and effect on the land, the ocean, the weather, the climate, and the community. We are indeed very fortunate to live where we do!

The two tables and data are courtesy of https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm

2014: Weak El Nino

2015: Very Strong El Nino

2016: Weak La Nina

2017: Weak La Nina

2018: Weak El Nino

2019: Weak El Nino to Enso Neutral (in Between El/La)

2020: Moderate La Nina

2021: Moderate La Nina

2022:

#Paleontologist, #paleontology, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #beachfossils, #SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #fossil, #fossilhunting, #beachcombing, #santacruzmuseumofnaturalhistory, #SCMNH, #universityofcaliforniamuseumofpaleontology, #UCMP, #CAS, #californiaacademyofsciences, #Monterey, #montereycounty, #mitigationpaleontology, #Purisima, #PurisimaFormation, #fossil, #gastropod, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting, #collectingtechniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene, #foundartifacts, #FossilFriday

 

Oh for '70's days gone by...

 

Two months out pre-pandemic hordes, January 11th, 2020. Oh for '70's days gone by... #Paleontologist, #paleontology, #SantaCruz, #santacruzcounty, #Monterey, #montereycounty, #paleontology, #beachfossils, #mitigationpaleontology, #Purisima, #PurisimaFormation, #fossil, #gastropod, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting, #collectingtechniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene

Meanwhile, Back at the Paleo Prep Lab

 Once fossils are blocked out of the rock in the field, those blocks with the fossils inside are brought back to the lab. Once there, as in this case with this Macoma sp. clam (WT892.14) (not a Cryptomya), paleontologists will begin to dig and prepare underneath the fossil to release it completely from its rocky tomb. This can only be done with the most robust fossils; many are so delicate that they need to remain in their original rocky blocks. Once the fossil is completely cleaned of sediment it can be preserved with liquid consolidant that soaks into it and which will harden and preserve the fossil for many decades of research in the museum. Finally, it is recorded numerically, which corresponds to the descriptive data on where and when it was discovered! #Paleontologist, #SantaCruz, #Monterey, #paleontology, #beachfossils, #mitigationpaleontology, #Purisima, #PurisimaFormation, #fossil, #gastropod, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting, #collectingtechniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene.

Aladdin's Lamp Comes to Life

 This fossil clam is named Yoldia cooperi (Gabb, 1865), is approximately 4 million years old, and is found occasionally in the Purisima Formation along Monterey Bay. The genus Yoldia is named in honor of D. A. D.'Aquirra e Gadea, Count of Yoldi, a Danish shell collector. I'm not sure who Cooper was. I enjoy discovering this beautiful clam species because of its fine sculpture, its thin shell (which makes it challenging to collect unbroken so it keeps my skill set sharp), and its whimsical similarity to an Aladdin's Lamp! Also interesting and making it completely unique from all other mollusks in the Purisima is this species' long row of many fine hinge teeth and alternating sockets found along the majority of the dorsal margin of the shell, shown in the second photo above. Today, Yoldia cooperi lives in the eastern Pacific from Humboldt County to Baja California Sur and in fine sediments from 5 to 40 meters. Its habitat has likely not changed much in the past 4 million years, as it is found entombed in fine to medium sandstones of the Purisima as well. Shown here with some of the tools needed to extract it safely from the rock, including the consolidant; a liquid hardening compound. This particular specimen at the top was extracted over a period of several days in order to allow the successive applications of consolidant to fully dry before moving the specimen from its tomb. WT730 (Below), WT765 (Above). #Paleontologist, #Santa Cruz, #Monterey, #paleontology, #beach fossils, #Purisima, #Purisima Formation, #fossil, #pacific paleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #fossil hunting, #collecting techniques, #Bivalve, #Research, #Pliocene, 

Ancient Wentletraps

 This is the Wentletrap Opalia varicostata, Stearns, in the gastropod family Epitoniidae. The word "Wentletrap" is borrowed from the Dutch "a winding staircase" so these are called staircase or ladder snails and this one shown here is an extinct Pliocene to Pleistocene species (less than 2 million years to about 5.3 million years). This is a gorgeous little snail and was not known from the Purisima Formation until recently!! Today, Wentletraps hang out around sea anemones, from whom they get their nourishment! #fossilprep, #Purisima, #fossilsnails, #gastropods, #beachfossils, #timelapse, #paleontology, #paleontologist, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, 

Once thought to be in the genus Pandora...

Once thought to be in the genus Pandora, after further discoveries and systematic analysis of its internal and external anatomy, this clam is now known to be a new species in the genus Frenamya, Pandoridae, Purisima Formation, northern Monterey Bay, 3-5 million years. Pacific Paleontology,

#pacificpaleontology, #paleomitigation, #paleoprep, #paleo, #mitigationpaleontology, #fossil, #paleontologist, #paleontology, 

Microfossil sampling benthic foraminiferans...

Microfossil sampling benthic foraminiferans from the mudstone accumulated inside this 4-5 million year old Tresus pajaroanus clam. Benthic Foraminiferans are microscopic Protists that live on or in the the bottom sediments and are usually marine. Typically Forams are not well-preserved in sandstone here in the Purisima Formation. However, the fine mud and silt sediments that accumulated inside fossil clams such as this one often have a higher percentage of Forams preserved in them. Eastern Pacific Pliocene foraminifera are not well-studied and hopefully this project will add to our understanding of local environmental conditions and allow us to place the Purisima formation here within the larger biochronological framework.