Purisima fossils Jan/Feb 2010.

In all 2010 was and is still to be a very successful year, here is some pictures from some of those fossils! First of all, here is a dolphin humerus ( parapontoporia sp.) This specimen is currently in the Santa Cruz Museum Of Natural History! The reason this bone is black is because it was found in a phosphatic gravel rich bonebed, due to phosphates black color, the process of fossilization turned it black. This fossil was found when intending to excavate a vertebra, these "accidental" finds are always nice.

And here is a beautiful great white shark tooth ( carcharodon carcharias). This fossil was found with my colleague Robert Boessenecker who got it out of a concretion for me. Here is a link to his blog http://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/. Anyways this is a fairly well preserved, 95 percent complete tooth.

Here is a fossil that was very exciting to find, it's a dolphin skull! (Most likely parapontoporia sp.) This fossil is in a concretion (a very hard rock), that along with the fact that it's a skull makes it require special tools to prepare. It will most likely end up with my colleague previously mentioned, who is at Montana State University, this find will be used study in the taphonomy of the Purisima formation.

Here is a picture of a quite exciting find, it's an articulated cervical vertebral column from a dolphin! Articulated vertebrae are pretty rare in the purisima formation, and most anywhere, the fact that these are cervicals (neck vertebrae), means that somewhere there could be a skull associated! Though I picked a horrible time to excavate them. When I was excavating, waves were crashing against me. When I started excavating I had no idea what it was, it wasn't until I hacked the first piece rock off until I realized that it was an articulated vertebral column, but I knew I couldn't wait until a lower tide to get it because then it would have washed away with the waves. So I had to try to excavate with the waves crashing against me. I hope I'll never make that mistake again... As a result, they're not in that good of shape...

Here is an example of what an articulated vertebral column looks like still in matrix, this one did not get excavated. But it might in the future. This was found right next to the excavated vertebral column, making me think these bones may be associated with each other!

Here is a pretty cool vertebra I excavated, I set it up so that you can see the pattern from the epiphyses on the bone, and the imprint from the pattern on a piece of rock.