4-million-year-old whale fossils unearthed in Santa Cruz County

Experts were able to unearth a prehistoric whale fossil at Santa Cruz County.

Archaeologist Scott Armstrong from Paleo Solutions’ archeological consultancy service was assigned to monitor a housing development in Scotts Valley, when the team uncovered the well preserved remains of an extinct whale species on September 4th.

Paleontologist Scott Armstrong says the remains are estimated to be 25 feet long, and the fossil is relatively intact – with pieces of the skull, much of the jaw, shoulder blades, arm bones and vertebrae found.

Armstrong informed the newspaper that the stays barrels its means into the hills by way of earthquakes and actions of tectonic plates.

“Most places where you see a hill, somewhere there’s a fault line nearby pushing it up”. Though these faults are relatively inactive, they have been lifting for several million or perhaps billion years. Currently, fossil bones are embedded in a rock.

Using hoes, shovels, brooms and smaller tools, the group slowly unearthed the artifact.

It should be noted that scientists had found whale fossils in New Zealand and the University of Otago palaeontology researchers continued to rewrite the history of New Zealand’s ancient whales by describing two further genera and three species of fossil baleen whales. The fossil will travel to Paleo Solutions’ office in Monrovia, in Southern California, where scientists will separate the fossil from the rock.

Matthew Clapham, a paleontologist at UC Santa Cruz, said the find is rare because of how intact the bones are.

“I consider the fossils you get alongside the shoreline, it is extra widespread to get a chunk of the cranium or the mind case or some bones”, Clapham advised the Sentinel. From that angle too, the present discovery could be helpful in understanding many interesting things about how the whales have evolved over millions of years.

The bones have been encased in plaster casts to preserve their integrity and to make them easier to transport. Therefore, the present find ranks as very impressive.

Studying the obtained remnants will provide the scientists valuable information regarding the evolutionary process of whales, depending on its completeness.