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A Story, Of An Urban Excavation Of A Fossil Gray Whale Named Raquel


PRK

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Before I completely finish with California, I guess I should share this. What a two week ordeal. I found it my freshman year in college, and my major was paleo. BTW, this is a VERY interesting fossil excavation STORY, not a discussion, read on! The real story begins in post 12. I hope everyone reads this story from start to finish

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Very nice. So it's been sitting in plaster all this time?

Context is critical.

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The 8.5 foot skull was prepared for L barnes and his whale monograph in 1982. They started resurrecting the post cranial parts of the skeleton in 2005. PS misso, the wheels of high end paleo grind excruciatingly slow. $$$$$

But keep reading, this is an incredible story of the finest gray whale fossil EVER found!

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Need titles, publisher and authors for the 1982 monograph and the 1984 book you mention. Can't find either.

The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".

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Very impressive! Does this explain your current avatar, Paul?

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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J. E. Gray described the gray whale from fossil remains found in England and Sweden - in was only later described as a living animal from the Pacific. So there are other museum specimens, although perhaps not a complete skeleton.

The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".

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In the 40yrs since this awesome fossil was found, THIS will be the very first time this story will be put in print. So no wonder it is difficult to find on the net---or anywhere.

And yes auspex- those are pics of our "discovery" day, before anyone else was informed. No one knew what was in store

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Wow, didn't realize that you were the one who discovered that specimen. Nice!

Regarding Barnes' work - there is no monograph. Barnes and McLeod (1984) give a cursory discussion of the specimen (~2 pages of text) and figure the skull in dorsal/ventral view. It's also no longer the only known gray whale fossil: There are numerous gray whales now known, including Eschrichtioides and Archaeschrichtius from the late Miocene of Italy (Bisconti, 2008; Bisconti and Varola, 2006), a fossil identified as Eschrichtius sp. from the Pliocene of Japan (Ichishima et al. 2006), and Gricetoides aurorae from the Yorktown Fm. at the Lee Creek Mine (Whitmore and Kaltenbach, 2008).

Barnes, L. G. and S. A. McLeod. 1984. The fossil record and phyletic

relationships of gray whales. p. 3-32. In M. L. Jones, S. L. Swartz, and

S. Leatherwood (eds), The Gray Whale: Eschrichtius robustus. Academic Press

Bisconti, M. 2008. Morphology and phylogenetic relationships of a new

eschrichtiid genus (Cetacea: Mysticeti) from the Early Pliocene of

northern Italy. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 153: 161-186

Bisconti, M. and A. Varola. 2006. The oldest eschrichtiid mysticete and a new

morphological diagnosis of Eschrichtiidae (gray whales). Rivista Italiana

Di Paleontologia E Stratigrafia 112: 447-457

Ichishima, H., E. Sato, T. Sagayama and M. Kimura. 2006. The oldest record

of Eschrichtiidae (Cetacea: Mysticeti) from the Late Pliocene, Hokkaido,

Japan. Journal of Paleontology 80: 367-379

Whitmore, F. C. and J. A. Kaltenbach. 2008. Neogene Cetacea of the Lee

Creek Phosphate Mine, North Carolina. Virginia Museum of Natural

History Special Publication 14: 181-269.

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Oops. There I go again citing my old information. Sorry

Maybe I should say "the only articulated gray whale". Or best gray whale fossil, ever found.

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...Maybe I should say "the only articulated gray whale"

From where I'm sitting, it is the most awesome, by any measure!

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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I thought you might enjoy a previously unwritten fossil whale story! The long and interesting story "THE SAGA OF RAQUEL"

It was 1970-71, over 40 years ago, in San Pedro calif, a suburb of Los Angeles.

Initially, I was looking for pleistocene seashells along the side of a borrow pit they had been digging for fill dirt for the freeway ramps. When I found some "crumbs of bone", and traced them up the hillside to their source. Then began to dig along one of the ribs as far as my arm could reach into the hill. i never did find the end of that bone, and so decided this fossil was grander than we could anticipate. So I stopped digging and buried it while we figgered our next move.

After about a week of deliberation amongst ourselves, we decided to do a little more exploratory excavation that included just a few interested friends from my geology class, including our teacher. This pic is our accomplishment after day 2 of digging on our own. Still before we started letting people know about it. As it was smack in the middle of town, and coincidently, only 8 minuets from my school, and easily accessible to anyone interested, in the Los Angeles area.

After this second day of digging we knew somthin was up. But had no idea where this was going. We again buried it before we left, so as not to encourage looters

About a week later we began digging in earnest then it REALLY hit the proverbial Fan

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As this story will be a long and ongoing endeavor , I should like to encourage ANY questions, they will help me tell a more complete story. ---------- No question, is insignificant! They will ALL be answered.

I seem to be one of the very very few left, that has first hand knowlege of this project. Most everyone that was 35 or older at that time, has either passed or is too old to care.

PS: is there anyone out there that remembers this great fossil time? It would be great to have your input too.

Here is one more appetizer pic for now

post-9950-0-49305700-1363051513_thumb.jpg

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I think fossils of gray whales were found off the Georgia coast as well within the last 10 years. Not a fully articulated skeleton, though. When I have time I'll look for the citation.

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PRK,

Thanks for sharing this story - it really is quite amazing!

How long did the entire excavation/removal process take?

And how complete was it? 100%? 90%?

Truly a once in a lifetime find!

Congratulations on it. :)

Regards,

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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congratulations PRK, quite a find, I hope there are more pictures, and associated finds to come :)

"Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun; so is your crocodile." Lepidus

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Thanks dude/xonenine, your questions will be answered as the story progresses.

This was quite the undertaking. It started off a small excavation, engaging only about 10 interested friends as helpers. Basically just some friends, our teacher from my geology class, and a local high school science teacher, that was contacted because of his avid interest in recent whales. But because this was also another of my "salvage projects", (I will go into this later), and we had to remove this specimen as quickly and carefully as possible, so the dig crew grew to dozens, ( as you will see). And since it was right IN the city of Los Angeles, and got lots of local publicity, we had to rope the immediate area off because the crowd quickly grew to an enormous 6-7THOUSAND spectators a day.

And because this excavation was well publicized and very easily accessable, a group of us stayed at the dig site 24-7 to protect the fossil from gawkers, souvenir hunters, and general trampling of the massive fossil. The entire dig took a bit more than 2 weeks, with an average working crew of 15, excavating approx 10 hours a day. It WAS a paleo rockstar awesome time!

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Y'know what else is awesome? The cars in the background of the photo!

ChevyVan, Charger Fastback, Ford Ranchero, Land Cruiser, three VW Beetles....

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Y'know what else is awesome? The cars in the background of the photo!

ChevyVan, Charger Fastback, Ford Ranchero, Land Cruiser, three VW Beetles....

Chas, I saw the vehicles in the background too, the difference is, I must be a little younger because I only recognized the VW Bugs. I didn't know the Land Cruiser even existed way back then.

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PRK, I think we need a new award for the Forum: LVFOTY.

Rich

The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".

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BTW: that "new"and cool land cruiser belonged to the author of several fossil papers I have seen mentioned on this fossil forum. Joe Cocke

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I also noticed the cool cars, especially the VW's, My first was a 67. But check out the pants on the fifth person standing from the right. Wow. Is this 1972? (I had striped bellbottoms that year).

Also in the wow department... 6-7 thousand a day. Holy papal white smoke!

So, you guys dug for two days on an exit ramp construction site without being discovered? Or did you have permission from the heavy equipment guys? This sounds like a great story. Do tell.

A friend of mine (he is 80 yrs young) is doing some living history interviews (I think that's the terminlogy they use) based on our museum. Getting peoples' stories down on tape, then transcribing. Has this whale tale ever been put to paper? It sounds like it needs to be. Maybe this is the first version?

It would be cool to collect a bunch of peoples' tales of fossil adventures to put to paper and get into some sort of book.... (I have some good tales from Niger that would fill a book on their own).

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I was very little at the time, but I remember when it seemed like every other car on the road was a VW bug. We even had a game on road trips. We would shout out 'zip' every time we saw one, and yell 'zip-a-dee-doo-dah' when we spotted the occasional convertible. :)

Context is critical.

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