Construction workers were digging on a mountain in Santa Cruz County, California, when they came across an almost completely intact fossil of a whale. Although it’s not unusual to find fossils in a mountainous area, this discovery is extremely odd given its location.
Whales in the mountains?
How did the whale get there? It probably didn’t swim to the mountains and it definitely didn’t fly there. According to a paleontologist who was monitoring the construction site, the fossil’s age might offer an explanation. The remains are estimated to be about 4-million-years-old, which suggests that the whale never moved; the earth simply did.
The tectonic activity in the area pushed the fossils of the well-preserved whale all the way up the mountains. This process most likely happened gradually over time, as earthquakes and plate fluctuations occurred over a fault line, which has remained inactive for some time now.
Digging the whale out
According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Scott Armstrong, the on-site paleontologist, along with two other archaeologists, started excavating the ancient sea creature on September 17th, 2015. In order to ensure the safety of the rare fossil, the experts are encasing the bones in plaster as they are being dug up. Following this procedure, the team will then travel to Paleo Solutions, an archaeological consulting service which Armstrong is a scientist with, located in Monrovia, California. There the scientists plan on fully excavating the fossils from the rock in order to study them in further detail.
Mysticete Whale
The fossils is believed to come from a mysticete whale, an ancestor of the baleen whale measuring about 25 feet in length. Scientists are particularly excited about this discovery due to its well preserved nature. Along with the entire vertebrate, the archaeological team was able to unearth parts of the skull, most of the jaw, arm bones, and shoulder blades. For the most part, only bits and pieces of the whale have been found in the past. With this new information, however, scientists will have a better understanding of how whales evolved, which, in turn, could also explain why whales are the way they are today.
