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, 

“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,  

“Pacific Paleontology Recognized by the California Small Business Develpment Center, SBDC”

https://calcoastalsbdc.com/success-stories/pacific-paleontology-papa 

I am pleased to announce that Pacific Paleontology has been chosen to be featured by the California Small Business Development Center as a Developing Success Story!  I could not be more pleased by this recognition for all our hard work that we have been doing over the past year!  The CalCoastalSBDC, the central California arm of the statewide organization, has been instrumental in our successes so far, in addition to helping our firm successfully acquire a $5,000.00 startup grant from the state!  With these funds we have been able to purchase much-needed equipment to fill important gaps in our collecting, prepping, and archiving abilities as well as onboard essential business insurance.  Here you can see some of the field and lab equipment used to extract and prepare the fossils.  Large new acquisitions from the British firm Zoic for our “Velociraptor” and “TRex” laboratory air scribes and from Eastwing and Zog for our field hand tools.  And of course big shoutouts to @Austin Hendy, @Charles L Powell, @Bobby Boessenecker, #lacmip, #santacruzmuseum, #ucmp, the #californiaacademyofsciences, and so many others for their ongoing instrumental support.

#Paleontologist, #paleontology,  #SantaCruz, #Monterey, #santacruzcounty, #mitigation, #mitigationpaleontology, #pacificpaleontology, @pacificpaleontology, #fossil, #fossilhunting, #fieldwork, #santacruzmuseum, #MontereyBay, #SCMNH, #universityofcaliforniamuseumofpaleontology, #UCMP, #californiaacademyofscience, #academyofscience, #ucmpberkeley, #LACMIP, #NHMLA, #Monterey, #fosssilprep, #paleo, #montereycounty, #fossil, #Constructionsite, #fossilhunting,

 “And… That’s a Wrap”

We are wrapping up our first paleontological mitigation contract here in my hometown of Scotts Valley and we took this opportunity for a promotional marketing photoshoot over the weekend for our new business website.  Pacific Paleontology was hired to monitor a small subdivision construction project here that involved digging down into the Santa Margarita Formation layer of rock, which is about 10-12 million years old.  This is a rock layer that is common in our area, is one that I have been studying here for the past four decades, and have discovered many hundreds of fossils from, primarily sharks.  The marine vertebrate fauna includes toothed and baleen whales, sharks, fish, rays, skates, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, birds, pinnipeds (eared and earless seals and primitive walruses), sirenians, and desmostylians, among others.  Marine clams, snails, and other invertebrates also occur here and are highly diverse in the local region.  Terrestrial vertebrates, such as camels and horses, as well as rare woody plants are also known to occur in the Santa Margarita.  No fossils were uncovered during construction in the massive medium-grained unconsolidated sands that used to make up the bottom of the ocean here.  Now that the grading is completed, Pacific Paleontology is tasked with producing the reports that will show compliance of the project to federal, state, and local legislation for the conservation of protected historical resources.  These regulations are relatively new within the past 20 years, and our understanding of the evolutionary history of life in California and elsewhere has advanced significantly due to the recovery of fossils through these protections.  As a coincidental aside, I worked closely onsite with Tracy Miller of MTM Tractor.  As it turns out, Tracy and I have a history together!  The last time we saw each other he was in jr. high and I was in high school and we were working together at a local restaurant in town; so we had some catching up to do!  Small world!!!

For more information on the fossils of the Santa Margarita Formation check out our video on the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History website: https://www.santacruzmuseum.org/naturalist-night-santa-cruz-sandhills/ 

#Paleontologist, #paleontology,  #SantaCruz, #mitigation, #mitigationpaleontology, #pacificpaleontology, #fossil, #fossilhunting, #santacruzmuseum, #fosssilprep, #fossil, #scottsvalley, #Miocene, #SantaMargarita, #SantaMargaritaFormation, 

 

“Rock Removal is About to Get a Lot Easier!”

 

When a fossil is found in the rock, paleontologists don’t actually just dig the fossil itself out of the rock but they remove it along with a block of the surrounding rock, called matrix, to later be prepared further in the lab. Like this 4 million year old ?Macoma sp. clam you see here, the matrix needs to be carefully cut back or completely removed, depending upon the fragility of the fossil.  Here you see traditional hand pick removal of the matrix, which fine-tunes the block for later compact storage in a public museum!  That method is about to be augmented with pneumatic help.

With our new small business development grant I’ll be purchasing two new air scribes; the “Velociraptor Mark II” and the “T. rex” from Zoic Palaeotech.  I’ve wanted air scribes for quite awhile, but have never been able to afford them for prep work until now!  Looking forward to upping my prep game now that my business is off the ground.

zoicpaleotech.com/ 

“Final Extraction, How-To with Frenamya”

 

The *last* stage of fossil preparation typically ends with extracting it from the block of rock that it was removed with, shown here with a 4-5 million year old clam

#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