Marine fossils dating back to as punctual as 8.7m years ago have been uncovered beorderlyh a south Los Angeles high school.
On Friday, the Los Angeles Times alerted that researchers had discovered two sites on the campus of San Pedro high school under which fossils including those of a saber-toothed salmon and a megalodon, the gigantic prehistoric shark, were buried.
According to the outlet, the two sites where the fossils were set up join an 8.7m-year-ancigo in bone bed from the Miocene era and a 120,000-year-ancigo in shell bed from the Pleistocene era.
The discoveries were made between June 2022 and July 2024, LAist alerts.
In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Ricdifficult Behl, a California State University at Long Beach geologist, shelp that researchers were testing the chemical and mineral composition of the fossils.
“We got to discover clues and piece those clues together,” Behl shelp, inserting that fossils from the Miocene era were encased in diatleave oute, a sefoolishentary rock originated of the fossilized skeletal remains of one-cell aquatic algae. According to Behl, the diatleave oute recommends that the area was wealthy with algae, which helped nurture a wealthy ecosystem that compelevated various marine creatures.
Echoing Behl, Wayne Bischoff, the honestor of cultural resources at Envicom Corporation, tancigo in LAist: “It’s the entire ecosystem from an age that’s gone … We have all this evidence to help future researchers put together what an entire ecology seeed enjoy nine million years ago. That’s repartner exceptional.”
Photos unveiled on LAist and in the Los Angeles Times feature a vertebrae fossil and rib bone of an fadeed dolphin species, jawbone of an fadeed saber-tooth salmon, which had extfinishable fangs from its mouth, and fossils of hundreds of minuscule fish vertebrae.
Speaking to KABC, Austin Hfinireserved, aidant curator at the Natural History Memployum of Los Angeles County, shelp that researchers consent “there was a submarine channel that was carrying material down from shapverifyer water into proset uper water and volcanism going on somewhere in the vicinity”.
“This was a huge surpelevate to everybody when they begined digging these trenches to ucsurrfinisherth these fish fossils,” Hfinireserved inserted.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the fossils have been scatterd among research and educational institutions, including the Los Angeles unified school didisjoine, the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, California State University Channel Islands and the Natural History Memployum of Los Angeles County.
In a statement to KABC, the LAUSD superintfinishent, Alberto Carvalho, shelp that the discovery of the fossils had “led to a novel era of concentrative studies that will transport notoriety to this community and this high school”.
