Vertebrate Fossil Sites In The Bay Area?

[uncoat]

Hey all i have seen a few topics on this lately and i know alot of the better known sites like Capitola and a few spots in Santa Cruz. There used to be a page put up by the California Paleontology society? that had sites and ratings and what could be found there but it seems to be down. I knew a few places that may or may not be still open to the public in Santa Cruz that had Miocene gravel deposits. Are any of these still open? Any one have any good suggestions for some legal sights in or near Marin county to collect vertebrates?

Thanks,

Nick

[siteseer]

Nick,

Are you talking about the sand quarries in Scotts Valley about five miles into the mountains from Santa Cruz? If so, those quarries have been kicking people out for a couple of decades at least. The public spot near the corner of Mt. Hermon Road and Lockhart Gulch Road is now covered by storage lockers. There are still spots to look for Late Miocene sea urchins and shark teeth but I haven't been out there since the storage locker place was built.

I don't know of any sites in Marin County. There's a Pleistocene mollusk locality near Santa Rosa but I don't know where that is. I think it was noted in a Southern California Paleo Society newsletter a couple of years ago.

Vertebrates are hard to come by in the Bay Area. If you read about the paleo of the area in some of the articles from the 20th century, it sounds like there is a lot of stuff but many of those reports were based on isolated finds. A friend went to check out some of those localities years ago and didn't find a bone bit (sites often built on or otherwise inaccessible).

Santa Cruz and Capitola are probably your best bets but you have to get there after a storm and this is around the end of the season. A couple of years ago, I met Boesse out there. I don't think we found anything but it was great talking with him.

Jess

Hey all i have seen a few topics on this lately and i know alot of the better known sites like Capitola and a few spots in Santa Cruz. There used to be a page put up by the California Paleontology society? that had sites and ratings and what could be found there but it seems to be down. I knew a few places that may or may not be still open to the public in Santa Cruz that had Miocene gravel deposits. Are any of these still open? Any one have any good suggestions for some legal sights in or near Marin county to collect vertebrates?

Thanks,

Nick

[Boesse]

If you're thinking of the San Francisco Bay Paleontological Society and the "Fossils in the San Francisco Bay Area" website - I ran that website and wrote most of the content when I was an undergraduate student, in addition to arranging field trips. There was a period of a few years where we went out several times a year and found some decent stuff, and I still go out collecting with a couple people from the old club (notably Chris Pirrone, who may or may not still be on this website).

Anyway - the website disappeared when MSN groups went belly up; they tried transferring all MSN groups to "Multiply", another web service that just really sucked. You could arrange anything hierarchically like a real website and everything had to be in blog format, and only 1/4 of the web pages were actually transferred. I wrote most of the webpages between my freshmen and junior years of high school, and a bit of it is a little amateurish looking back at it. It used to have a long list of different fossil sites with directions to each locality - I'm not sure if those are still accessible or not. I've pondered putting it out of its misery and taking the page down, as at this point it is useless in its current format. I haven't had time to update it since I was an undergrad student anyway, and the move to multiply killed any chance of keeping the page alive.

That being said, sure, there are lots of vertebrate bearing fossil localities in the SF area - but aside from Capitola and some of the Scotts Valley sites, collecting vertebrate fossils is illegal at all of them - especially the localities in Marin County. While my webpage was up, I did notice a higher frequency of collecting and destruction of bones in the field at certain localities, which again decreased after the site went defunct - given some of the vandalized whale skulls I've seen, it was a welcome change. So, sorry I can't be of any further help.

Bobby

[uncoat]

thanks for the reply's fellas.

Are you talking about the sand quarries in Scotts Valley about five miles into the mountains from Santa Cruz? If so, those quarries have been kicking people out for a couple of decades at least. The public spot near the corner of Mt. Hermon Road and Lockhart Gulch Road is now covered by storage lockers. There are still spots to look for Late Miocene sea urchins and shark teeth but I haven't been out there since the storage locker place was built.

Jess

Yeah i recall after the lockers were built there was a spot around the corner from there that had a down fence that said "do not Enter" or something but one could see many holes dug in the cliff and lots of fossil collecting being done. This was one of the sites listed on the mentioned website, Anyone know if it is still "ok" to collect from this area? Any particular Sites that one could collect in Santa Cruz? Are road-cuts legal to collect from in CA? I have not been down there in years and would love to know how it is now..

Thanks,

Nick

[KOI]

These sites are not for collecting but visiting them will help to learn more about local fossiliferous deposits and what to look for. Legal aspects of collecting vertebra remains (fossils or not) on public land in California may be tricky.

 

 

[siteseer]

I still miss that Lockhart Gulch site.  In the late 80's to early 90's there was usually at least one other collector out there and most people wanted to talk and show what they had.  It was a place people could take their kids.  One guy was a geologist and he told me someone had found a decent rhino tooth years before.  Another collector and his wife were more into sea urchins but they dug there too.  His brother showed me the nicest Hemipristis I've ever seen from there.  It was complete and light yellow with white streaks.  Most teeth from there are very worn.

 

Another collector had a light purple Parotodus and a complete dugong tooth.  Incredibly rare stuff! 

[Boesse]

I never made it to the original Lockhart Gulch site but I did dig in the same stratum about 50 yards off that property pretty extensively from ~2001 to about 2007 or so. That site, and seeing a guy pull out a sea cow tooth - and unlike the shark teeth, nobody was able to tell me what species it was - was the experience that drove me towards marine mammal paleontology. That, and discovering that Pliocene assemblage out on the Halfmoon Bay coast.

[siteseer]

On 1/17/2021 at 9:46 AM, Boesse said:

I never made it to the original Lockhart Gulch site but I did dig in the same stratum about 50 yards off that property pretty extensively from ~2001 to about 2007 or so. That site, and seeing a guy pull out a sea cow tooth - and unlike the shark teeth, nobody was able to tell me what species it was - was the experience that drove me towards marine mammal paleontology. That, and discovering that Pliocene assemblage out on the Halfmoon Bay coast.

 

Hi Bobby,

 

One of the locals used to check out the site and watch for stuff weathering out of that cliff right after it rained.  Maybe the coolest piece I ever saw was a large Palaeoparadoxia tooth with mollusk borings into and through the root.  I have a small megalodon so worn it looks like a guitar pick but you can still tell what it is.

 

There was a woman out there who actually wanted as many of those little, worn mammal bone pieces as she could find.  She included them in her jewelry-making because they're natural, shiny, durable and come in a mix of colors.  Thinking about it now, she should still soak them in Paraloid or Butvar to harden them a little more.

 

Jess