Hobbies And Interests
Home  >> Hobbies >> Other Hobbies

Fossil Hunting in San Pedro, California

San Pedro, California (pronounced there as San Pee-Drow) was one of the locations in Los Angeles County where Roman Polanski shot the award-winning noir film "Chinatown." It is also near the largest port on the West Coast of the U.S. During the Pleistocene period -- thought to exist from 10,000 to 1.8 million years ago --- the San Pedro area was underwater as the fossil record there shows.
  1. Urban Treasure

    • Many of the best places to hunt fossils in the San Pedro area are right in town. In 1969, the city government authorized a landfill in the Harbor District Yard and began excavating the ground. It quickly discovered that it had unearthed a natural museum when they identified a treasure trove of fossilized marine invertebrates. The landfill was abandoned, and the site was turned over to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, which cataloged hundreds of species of what are thought to be Late Pleistocene marine life.

    The John Gibson Digs

    • Amateur fossil hunters can still find fossils from what are thought to be 120,000-year-old marine outcrops in town, on the freeway embankment near John Gibson Boulevard. Coming from Los Angeles on the Harbor Freeway, fossil hunters need to turn onto the C Street exit, take a right onto Figueroa, then another right onto John Gibson Boulevard. Drive a half mile, and find a parking place. Look up the embankment for where other people have dug.

    Oligocene Fossil Find

    • While what are thought to be late Pleistocene fossils like mollusks and crustaceans are plentiful in and around San Pedro, older fossils are also discovered there from time to time. In August 2008, a nearly complete fossil fish was found in San Pedro that was thought to date back 26 million years, which would make it a Oligocene find. The Oligocene epoch was possibly from 23 million years ago to 33 million years ago and corresponds to what is thought to be the appearance of elephants and horses.

    The Tsunami Layer

    • In 2001, paleontologists and geologists studied a fossil "hash" in the vicinity between Pacific Avenue and Mesa Street. This layer of fossils was between 1- and 3-feet thick, which seemed unusual to them, given the tendency of marine invertebrates to deposit in thinner layers. They concluded that only a large wave could have created this thick deposition. From this, they concluded that possibly around 80,000 years ago, there was a great tsunami that struck the area.


https://www.htfbw.com © Hobbies And Interests