Workers unearth huge fossil cache in California

BBC ^ | September 21, 2010

[billorites]

Workers building a substation in California have discovered 1,500 bone fragments from about 1.4 million years ago.

The fossil haul includes remains from an ancestor of the sabre-toothed tiger, large ground sloths, deer, horses, camels and numerous small rodents.

Plant matter found at the site in the arid San Timoteo Canyon, 85 miles (137km) south-east of Los Angeles, showed it was once much greener.

The bones will go on display next year.

The find is a million years older than the famous haul from the tar pits at Rancho La Brea in Los Angeles, said Rick Greenwood, a microbiologist and also director of corporate environment health and safety for Southern California Edison.

"If you step back, this is just a huge find," he said. "Everyone talks about the La Brea Tar Pits, but I think this is going to be much larger in terms of its scientific value to the research community."

The number of skeletons found at the site may be explained by a marsh or lake bed that trapped animals looking for water, leaving them victim to predators, palaeontologists think.

Tom Demere, a San Diego Museum of Natural History palaeontologist, said the find was not directly comparable to La Brea, as it comprised different species from another era.

But he said it would be valuable.

"We have a fuzzy view of what this time period was like in terms of mammal evolution," Mr Demere said. "A discovery like this - when they're all found together and in a whole range of sizes - could really be an important contribution."

[EternalVigilance]

I’m sure all the bones were time-stamped.

/s

[James C. Bennett]

Wow ping!

[rahbert]

they are. Carbon-14

[NorCoGOP]

Plant matter found at the site in the arid San Timoteo Canyon, 85 miles (137km) south-east of Los Angeles, showed it was once much greener.

Bush's Fault! (tm).

[Darksheare]

Their biggest clue was Helen Thomas referring to one of the skeletons as “Mother”.

[EternalVigilance]

Yeah, right.

[DManA]

Then she told the dinosaur bones to go back to where they came from.

[billorites]

Bush lied...

Giant ground sloths died.

[Sacajaweau]

No....cave nearby....According to the drawings...signed and dated by the artist, the saber tooth tiger was named "Sharpie", the Sloth was named "Hang in There" and the camel was named "Humper".

Time stamped....you're so silly....

[Darksheare]

Those upstart dinosaurs!

[umgud]

Workers building a substation in California have discovered 1,500 bone fragments from about 1.4 million years ago.

I assume the substation won't be built.

[EternalVigilance]

It’s so standard. These articles unblushingly state their presumptions about age as fact.

Every once in awhile I just have to speak up and state my contempt for this arrogant deceptive practice.

The fact is, they don’t know how old they are.

[NorCoGOP]

But wait...they carbon dated Mt. St. Helens ash, and determined with scientific accuracy that it last erupted 25,000 years ago.

What more do you want?

(/ sarc)

[RaceBannon]

More proof of Noah’s flood

[Sacajaweau]

About 20 years ago, I was in Virginia...got on a lonely road....found a big boulder....carved 1788 and my initials with some actual stone cutting tools I have, smiled and drove away.

Some jerk will certainly find this "Revolutionary Stone" someday.

[allmendream]

And I suppose you also think Astronomers shouldn't talk about how light from an object one hundred million light years away is from events one hundred million year ago?

Do you similarly insist that they don't know how long ago the event happened?

[Candor7]

Did they find Nancy Pelosi in there?Barbara Boxer, or
that platypus Waxman? That would explain a lot.

[James C. Bennett]

But wait...they carbon dated Mt. St. Helens ash, and determined with scientific accuracy that it last erupted 25,000 years ago.

Does the dating measure the age of the erupted material, or the age of the eruption event?

[NorCoGOP]

I believe it was the event - based on the "age" of C-14 decay in the ash (that erupted in 1980 - I lived in Montana at the time, so I was an eyewitness to the ashfalls)...

but the ash was supposedly erupted 25,000 years ago...

Scientific accuracy, indeed...