First , the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree came out of the ground . A few workweek by and by , the bones emerged . Bit by moment over the past class , a squad of paleontologists and geologists , among others , have bring out the fossilized remains of a Miocene forest , from its gomphothere and mastodons to the trees themselves .
A common forest fire fighter , Greg Francek , stumbled upon the situation last summer . It lies east of San Francisco , near what is today the Mokelumne River . “ I was on patrol out on the river basin and I encounter upon a petrified Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , ” Francek said in astatementput out by the East Bay Municipal Utility District . “ After finding dozens of trees , I began to agnize that what I was looking at was the petrified remains of a timberland . ” Further excavations over the follow weeks yield bones , and a stratigraphic autopsy commenced .
The full regalia of animals found at the site is stupefying . Rock on the internet site is from theMiocene , an epoch relatively recent in cryptical time ( 23 million to 5 million years ago ) that feature animals fairly similar to many chance today . Miocene forest vaunt horse ancestors , cousins of modern rhinoceros , gomphothere ( like elephant , with twice as many tusks ) , tremendous 400 - lbf. Salmon River progenitor , and giraffe - sized camels , among other creature . Mammalian megafauna were thriving , and the fortuitous discovery at Mokelumne reveal a dandy belt of that biodiversity .
Mastodon teeth, dug out of an ancient petrified forest in California.Photo: Jason Halley (California State University, Chico)
It ’s hard to say what cause the demise of the animals retrieve there , whether one fate doomed them all or they all had personal crises around the same time . agree to Russell Shapiro , a fossilist at California State University , Chico who has been excavating the website , the fossils come from two types of rock . Some is volcanic mud rate of flow , and the rest is river deposit . It ’s possible that the animal were bury in a mudslide , Shapiro say , but more review of the bones and geological single-valued function of the site will be needed for an accurate forensic unpacking .
“ This preservation is not uncommon around vent , ” Shapiro said in an electronic mail . “ The muddied sediments entomb the creature and plants so other critters ca n’t put down them so easily . What is unique is the sheer volume , as well as the fact that this site is new to skill . ”
Shapiro said that roughly several hundred vertebrate fossils and at least 500 ossified trees have been discover so far . The situation , in other words , is Brobdingnagian — one could n’t necessitate for a panorama that better displays the paleoenvironment and its denizens . Among the fossils they ’ve turned up are camel toe bones and mastodon tusks , as well as the remains of a giant Salmon River ancestor and prehistoric tapir and rhinoceroses . ( Before the last Ice Age thawed , North America swarmed with big mammals . Hornless rhinos swan fromFloridato California , as did mammoths and jumbo ground tree sloth , but many of these creaturesdisappeared from North America . Some that head to South America stuck around a little longer , a migration known as theGreat American Biotic Interchange . ) The team had to bring in a backhoe to filch some of the larger pieces , like the mastodon tusk , which were estimated to be 8 million age old . Though dating has yet to be rendered on the other fossils , if the fauna were killed off in a mudslide , they ’d be from the same clock time .
8-million-year-old tusks from a Miocene mastodon.Photo: Jason Halley (California State University, Chico)
With a site of such scale — containing a veritable bevy of animate being — it goes without saying that we must be patient . Though member of the public ca n’t lead out to the site to crack things out , fossil from the jab are set to be show at CSU , Chico ’s Gateway Science Museum in September , along with some ancient heavyweight and ichthyosaur fogey from another site in California . If you ca n’t wait , visitor are earmark to observe fossil conservators and researchers work on the castanets in the university ’s lab every Friday and Saturday .
“ We find more fossils each time we go out , ” Shapiro say . “ The real science could literally take decades . ” So for every week you do n’t go see these bones , there ’s the likeliness that a new batch of them will be dug out and tot to this incredible accumulation .
More : investigator say they ’ve found the ancient dens of gargantuan carnivorous worms
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