4-million-year-old whale fossil found in California

The 4 million-a year old-previous fossilized skeleton of whale has been excavated at a development site in Santa Cruz County. Project leaders called in a team of experts from Paleo Solutions, a Los Angeles County-based archaeological consulting service, to safely remove the whale bones. This whale is estimated to be roughly 25 feet long; and the fossil they found was relatively intact, complete with portions of the skull, a majority of the jaw, as well as the shoulder blades, the arm bones and even vertebrae. “They’re comparatively inactive faults. But…”

The excavation course of started Thursday, as employees utilizing hoes, shovels, brooms and smaller instruments slowly unearthed the traditional stays. “But yeah, it’s from lifting thousands, maybe millions of years ago”, Armstrong added.

The remains have been placed in a plaster to maintain its relatively intact condition and give way to a safe and convenient transport from the site to the Paleo Solutions office located in Monrovia, where additional analysis will be performed.

According to Armstrong, if the remains are much more fragile than the rock, it can become very challenging to reveal the accurate shape of the bones, standing in risk at being damaged themselves. This makes the preservation of the fossil a lot more surprising, considering the shifting it has been through.

In 2012, a fossilized skeleton of a small whale was uncovered in nearby Pleasure Point.

It is believed that the fossil was gradually moved to the Scotts Valley region through movements of tectonic plates or earthquakes.

Taking into consideration the integrity of the bones, a paleontologist from the UC Santa Cruz named Matthew Clapham thinks the discovery is exceptional.

Local paleontologists are calling such recoveries a rarity and useful in terms of getting some insight into the evolution of whales.

“That’s an interesting time in whale evolution”. “So this sounds like it’s a very impressive find”.

From their early ancestral groups to the specimen now found, plenty of whales were beginning to evolve.