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


PRK

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As I mentioned back in an earlier thread, I love the "story", the more human side of the hunt. as much as the study of the fossil itself. As you have probably noticed, this goes for all the locales i hunt. So I intend to make this thread a story that happened over 40 years ago, and as I have told this story countless times, it has never been put in print.

The slopes of the sides of the giant borrow pit were cut on a 40% angle, and while a whale skeleton itself is approx half its length, just vertebrae, when digging the borrow pit they luckily cut the posterior half off (all the caudal vertebrae), leaving the ribbed section all the way to the tip of the skull including rib cage, both scapula, arm bones, and three foot flippers, but sadly no lower jaws

The whale fossil extended head first into the slope so the further we dug into the hill to expose the skull, the exponentially deeper the overburden increased. The overburden was 14 feet deep over the skull. It took the crew over 2 full days of digging---just overburden, over the skull.

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PRK, there is also a story I heard many years ago about a whale skull, I believe, that was found by somebody walking along a creek. It was exposed in the creek bed. This was somewhere in California as well. Maybe you or Bobby is familiar with the story?

Rich

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

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hmmm...college freshman, California, beaches,,,there must be some interesting stories we may never hear :popcorn: See any good bands there?

"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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Hi JPC thanks for the interest- that borrow pit had already been Dug a couple years before. No equipment around, just a giant hole in the ground(approx a mile in diameter, and 50feet deep), and only a couple hundred yards from a major freeway. Initially it was dug for fill dirt for freeway ramps ( somewhere), also this pit was dug adjacent to the city dump for future dump space.

There was a nice zone of Pleistocene mollusks in one wall, with the occasional sh th, and other random vert fossils,16feet above the whale fossil itself. However NOTHING EVEN CLOSE to the gray whale fossil.

While in the beginning of the dig there were not 6 thousand spectators, but after someone leaked to the press, the fact there was a huge fossil being removed right within city limits.------ It only took 1 leak and before we knew it there were dozens of press reporters/photographers around. THEN the crowds of people started. There were about 10days of those overwhelming crowds, that extrapolates to a crowd about 50-70 thousand onlookers. i never thought a fossil dig would turn into a spectator event

It wasn't long before the story and photos went AP, and the day after that, the story went IP, let alone the massive local press coverage. I received acknowledgement letters from people I didn't even know from around the world

And yes xonenine, remember, it was the 1960's and beginning of the 70's also ---yeee haaa!

This photo is looking west along the slope. The people are picking bits of Pleistocene shells for souvenirs. The pile of sediment in the center of this pic is some of the overburden that was removed from over the skull

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So, skipping ahead a bit, did you have to collect it as one really big jacket? There... that's a leading question.

When we dug out T rex a few years ago, we got some good publicity, and we limited visitors to Saturdays. We had about 100 people visiting every Saturday. Not quite 6000 per day. But then we are in the least populated state and the site was a long haul away from even the small town of Lusk. Not quite LA.

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Hi JPC- let's not skip too far ahead, ill be getting to that soon enough. However, we did remove the bones individually, that were overlaying the bones underneath. The skull jacket alone weighed a ton.

As you can see in the very first picture of this thread, several ribs on one side have already been removed to work on the vertebral column itself, and this also made the removal the scapula and arm bones much easier.

BTW: the entire length to the recovered skeleton was 26feet, and it was half gone. The jacketed ribs themselves were over 7 feet long.

Jacketing the skull.

Preparing the scapula for jacketing and removal, with the humerus

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PRK, is any of those three a young Howell Thomas?

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

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Hi rich- I never had the opportunity to meet young Howell Thomas. MANY, MANY others tho

Shelton( Shelly ) applegate( aka: SPA), Leonard bessom, ed mitchell, even young Larry barnes( Aka; LGB) flew down from Berkeley to visit for a few days, joe coke, Mary Odono. Nuff for now, Many others to follow

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as an aside, I came across this paper, while looking for the Barnes description, if anyone would care to read it

Phylogenetic implications of skull structure and feeding behavior in Balaenopterids (Cetacea, Mysticeti) Virginie Bouetel

"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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Great post PRK! It looks like the discovery was made during the cooler part of the year in so. California. Is that a propane heater in one of the pics? It looks like a propane lantern as well. I also noticed camp fuel so I guess you were cooking there as well. I'm thinking of the cool nights in the desert. I can only imagine the excitement. Waiting to hear "The rest of the story "

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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Hi squali- yes the dig took place in January '71, a bit chilly at night but after all, it WAS S. Calif. Actually I don't remember the heater as we always had a nice fire at night. BUT, have you ever slept in a city dump? Weird, but kinda cool.

As for the lanterns-----since we were under a deadline to remove the whale, a number of us stayed on site around the clock, any time spent digging was a plus. So occasionally someone would get in a couple hours of digging after hours. I have a good shot of night digging with lanterns around here somewhere, but haven't seen it for a while. When I do, rest assured ill post it. It's pretty cool.

AND as for food---in the beginning of the dig we did have to cook our own lunches and dinners, but remember we were right in the city, and as the dig progressed and grew, many of the local residents seemed happy to bring up huge pots of chili or stew for the entire crew."

We also had a very helpful and wonderful PR friend who was not actually involved in the dig, so his contribution was to drive around the local area, talk to the resteraunt owners, and make deals for cooked food ( pizzas, fried chicken, deli sandwiches, and several times even entire resteraunt style seafood dinners, etc) for mentioning their establishment in trade for the publicity. It was his idea to take on this task, he saw to it we were all well fed, and BOY were we greatful. Alotta Good catered food! Thank you John farrell, for the FREE FOOD!

And keep in mind it was NOT a small crew. For instance, for several lunches Kentucky fried supplied a dozen buckets of chicken and a couple gallons of slaw, each lunch!

Some major players of the dig, enjoying a break for lunch sampling the local cuisine down at base camp ---- L to R, Richard Reynolds ( research assistant LACM), Joe Cocke (associate preparator LACM), Bill Samaras (high school science teacher), and Eugene Fritsche (geochemist cal st. Northridge)

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This is good lore, Storyteller :)

"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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Yeah, I came home and told mom, i found a whale!!!!!

her answer was "HOW COULD YOU MISS IT" (a whale)

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Yeah, I came home and told mom, i found a whale!!!!!

her answer was "HOW COULD YOU MISS IT" (a whale)

It seems obvious, when you think about it.

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Ok, This is not the night digging pic I was talking about, but all the same it IS a night shot. The problem was that there weren't many photogs around at night. ESP- as the REAL action was during the day. Over the years, somehow, my photo collection of this project keeps dwindling. Luckily i do have a bunch left, and i will keep looking through my piles though!!!

This is my friend bill Samaras and I in front of the back wall of the pit, with the unjacketed scapula/humerus in the foreground.

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Funny you should mention it I have spent more than one night in a landfill. (solid waste engineer) They are not overly pleasant places. Was the whale positioned at one elevation or was there an incline along the base as if it were beached? Did you have to build a road to it to remove the jacketed pieces? I imagine some kind of crane or boom truck would be required.

It's hard to remember why you drained the swamp when your surrounded by alligators.

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Hi squali- good questions- the whale itself had bloated with gasses at the time of death, rolled over belly up, then was beached upsidedown, in its HORIZONTAL resting place, possibly a shallow lagoon.

Luckily, no roads were needed to be built, the access road to the dump lead right up to the whale project. eventually, that access road to the dump had to be gated off to unauthorized vehicles, foot traffic only, but just a short easy quarter mile walk from the paved road, because soooooo many people were conveniently driving right up to the fossil, creating quite the chaos. It was reopened the last day, the removal day, so the spectators and heavy equipment had access in to help.

We needed special heavy equipment to help with the final removal. The jacketed skull weighed approx a ton and the vertebral column was removed in one giant long piece( 25 vertebrae in one jacket), and weighed well over 2 tons. We even had to design special jacketing techniques to move these heavy pieces of earth without damaging the encased fossil

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All in all, few people were aware of what was happening in the upper dump on jan 4 1971. But by jan 5 1971, "let the floodgates begin". This exponential crowd growth increased every day right up to the removal day, due to the overwhelming publicity.

NOTE; notice the backgrounds. Another interesting note is most participants cleaned up, and respectfully dressed up for the whale finale. Kinda cool eh?

Day 3 --------------------------------- Day 5-----------------------------------day 16

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wow... again, look at those vehicles in the last photo... not one, but two split windshield VW buses. Wow.

Thanks for the cool story.

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Being right "in" the dump was quite the convenience. We built a camp with discarded furniture and decorations gathered from out of the dump, (chuckle) things we could recycle and use for the moment. Sort of an " early dump motife". And as the crew grew so did the dump laden campsite. An old rocking chair here, an old lazy boy there, and a table or two. Soon it was a LARGE and very used living room. We even brought up a broken television from below to make things more homey. In all, it was a very comfortable camp, with a seemingly endless supply of furniture and supplies.

All the lumber we needed was reclaimed from the dump. The wood for our fires at night, the boards for the reinforce of the larger jackets, etc.

The city even brought up some Andy gumps " port o Pottys" and left them for a couple weeks, for our convenience.

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...The city even brought up some Andy gumps " port o Pottys" and left them for a couple weeks, for our convenience.

A not inconsequential logistical detail!

"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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