Marine fossils dating as early as 8.7 million years ago have been discovered under a south Los Angeles high school.
Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that researchers discovered two sites on the campus of San Pedro High School buried beneath fossils, including those of a sabertooth salmon and a megalodon, the giant prehistoric shark.
According to the outlet, the two sites where the fossils were found include an 8.7m-year-old bone bed from the Miocene era and a 120,000-year-old shell bed from the Pleistocene era.
The discoveries were made between June 2022 and July 2024, LAist reports.
In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Richard Behl, a California State University at Long Beach geologist, said that researchers are testing the chemical and mineral composition of the fossils.
“We have to find clues and piece those clues together,” Behl said, adding that fossils from the Miocene era were encased in diatomite, a sedimentary rock composed of the fossilized skeletal remains of unicellular aquatic algae. According to Behl, the diatomite indicates that the area was rich in algae, which helped foster a rich ecosystem made up of various marine animals.
Echoing Behl, Wayne Bischoff, the director of cultural resources at Envicom Corporation, told LAist, “This is the entire ecosystem of an age that’s gone … We have all this evidence to help future researchers piece together what an entire ecology looked like nine million years ago. It’s really rare.”
Photos published on LAist and in the Los Angeles Times include a fossil vertebra and rib of an extinct species of dolphin, jawbone of an extinct sabertooth salmon, which had retractable fangs from its mouth, and fossils of hundreds of small fish vertebrae.
Talk to KABC’s Austin Hendy, assistant curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, said researchers believe “there was an undersea channel that carried material from shallower water to deeper water and volcanism is going on somewhere in the area”.
“It was a big surprise to everyone when they started digging these trenches to dig up these fish fossils,” added Hendy.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the fossils have been distributed among research and educational institutions, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, California State University Channel Islands and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
In a statement to KABC, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said that the discovery of the fossils “has ushered in a new era of concentrative studies that will bring prominence to this community and this high school.”
