Ernst Quarry / Sharktooth Hill: A Cautionary Tale

[ClearLake]

My wife and I just returned from a trip out west (western USA for our international friends) which featured a trip to the famous Miocene site near Bakersfield; Ernst Quarry or Sharktooth Hill, whichever name you prefer.  As most of you know this site it well known for the rich fauna of sharks teeth, marine mammal bones and other related items and has been written up numerous times on TFF going back over the years.  We had originally planned this trip a year ago, but a family emergency caused us to reschedule.  So we decided to try again this year and picked late April to try and avoid the "rainy" season and beat the start of the summer heat.  One out of two isn't bad - haha.  We had beautiful blue skies but unfortunately had an unseasonably early heat wave that had the temps climbing into the upper 90's!  My main goal of this trip was to find some of the beautifully preserved, richly colored, good sized sharks teeth (Mako's being the most common) that I have seen millions of pictures of and read dozens of trip/ID reports about here on the Forum.  It seemed with a diligent amount of work digging and sifting, I was sure to come away with a bagful of beauties!

 

This is where my caution part comes in.  We had a good trip, but the results were no where near our expectations.  I have been fossil collecting for over 40 years and have had plenty of down days/visits/trips, but when we walked away with maybe a dozen teeth and the largest complete one at just over an inch long from a site that represents supposedly one of the richest around after a whole day of steady digging, suffice it to say, we were a bit let down.  We worked steadily throughout the day, tried several different spots and outlasted everyone.  As the day heated up most of the folks were gone by very early afternoon, we had the place to ourselves for the last couple of hours before we bailed out just after 4 pm (the car thermometer read 99 when we left).  We had to be out by 5.  From what I saw of about half the other collectors that I talked to, were similar results, a modest number of teeth, nothing very large.  Someone may have found a ton of great stuff, but I did not hear or see it.

 

So, my caution is not that this place is not good, don't go: no, not at all.  It is to keep your expectations realistic.  There is no doubt I oversold this to myself.  I found some nice teeth as you will see below, just not the size or quantity that I thought was the norm out of here.  It could be I had a down day, it could be I didn't know the best spots to dig, it could be the quarry just does not produce like it used to, it could be that I just didn't move enough dirt to support my expectations, it could be a lot of things.  But when I raised my expectations to high levels on a trip half way across the country that this was the focus of, I guess I kind of set myself up.  Keep it real!!!  I mostly bring this up as I often see on here that people would love to go here, it is on their bucket list, etc, etc.  Again, I'd encourage you to visit, just keep your expectations in line, dig as much as you possibly can, and you will probably find the mother lode!

 

Ok, enough of my blathering.  The trip was fun, we did find some nice teeth, the preservation of them is excellent for the most part and I am working my way through some matrix I brought back which contains some very cool little teeth in there.  Here is what we found:

 

The whole kit and caboodle with my tentative ID's scribbled on the paper towel.  I will follow with close ups of most of them.

 

This was actually the first tooth we found, just an edge sticking out of the chunk of matrix (on left).  On the right is after a bit of prepping so you can see the whole tooth.  I think I'm going to do a bit more shaving down but leave this in the matrix.  The round object by the root is just a pebble that was in there.  I also found another small sharks tooth as I was removing matrix that is no longer in the picture.

  

 

These Cosmopolitodus hastalis are the most common tooth found in the Round Mountain Silt from what I read (and my 1 day experience).

 

These Cosmopolitodus planus (Hooked or Curved Mako) were neat and more the size I though we would encounter.  Unfortunately, neither of these are complete.

 

These tiny ones we managed to see as we were sifting.  Since my napkin writing I have learned they are indeed a Carcharhinus, but the species seems to be an ongoing topic of discussion (not uncommon for this genus from what I have found).  In the matrix I am picking there are lots more of these but that will be a topic for a future Micro post.

 

These three are some of my favorites, very neat little teeth.  Since the napkin writing, I have found the the upper sharks tooth may not be Hemipristis but rather a Hexanchus upper anterior.  If anyone can corraborate from this picture that would be great, otherwise I'll probably make an ID post for a couple of these items to sort them out.

 

 

These small ones are also nice.  I see I did not take a picture of the most diagnostic side of the Squalus, but it does have the finger like extension to below the root on the other side.  I also have found several more of these in the fine matrix.

   

 

 

And lastly for this group a neat little bone that I believe is a cetacean periotic.  I saw another post in which @Boesse identified a similar looking one as Aulophyster morricei, but there were some differences between this one and that post which I don't know if its due to simple variation within the bone or it is a different animal.  Again, if I can't get a confirmation or different ID based on this one picture, I'll be happy to create an ID thread.

 

We also found a lot of bone, I brought home a bag full of some of the bigger chunks I found in one area.  I only recognize some rib fragments (second pic) and a possible beat up vert (third pic in middle).  I'm not sure what the rest of the fragments represent.

 

   

 

And finally, just a quick bit on the matrix I brought back.  I did a quick sieve separation in the field just to have a mix of different sizes.  This turned out to be a waste of time as the matrix was too damp to properly sieve.  When I got back home and had water available, I was able to quickly run it through a small series of sieves and get down to some pickable matrix.  I used a window screen (about 12-14 mesh) and a 40 and 60 mesh sieve.  95% of the matrix was fine silt (hence the name of the Formation) and went through the 60 mesh and therefore contains nothing that I'm going to spend time on (60 mesh is 0.25 mm, too small for me to try and pick with the equipment and dexterity that I have).  The material caught on the 13 mesh contained almost all the sharks teeth but only represented a small baggie of the couple gallon bags of matrix I was able to fit in my luggage.  You can see in the picture below the small bag of matrix to the right and the little beaker contains about 26 cm3 of fossil material picked (about 17% of the bag volume).  This is mostly small fragments of broken bone but there are lots of shark and ray teeth in there as well as a few other items (future post in Micro section).  I have only looked at the 40 and 60 mesh material a little bit.  The 40 has a few very small ray teeth, and some fish teeth (and more broken bone fragments).  I have not seen much in the way of identifiable fossils in the 60 mesh material yet.

 

 

That is all for now, thanks for following along.  I appreciate any thoughts or comments on my ID's or anything else.

 

Mike

[Boesse]

Your periotic bone is a nice one - but not a sperm whale. It's from a kentriodontid dolphin, likely Kentriodon or Liolithax.

[Jeffrey P]

Great trip report and pics of your finds. I was at the Ernst Quarry on April 1st for my first time. Weather was ideal- low 70s and sunny. I enjoyed my experience which I considered more exploratory. My expectations were not terribly high. As such, I didn't find that much worthwhile material- some nice complete teeth, but nothing large. My favorite was a tiny Squatina (angel shark). I also found a number of small pieces of presumably marine mammal bone, but I didn't keep any of it since it wasn't diagnostic. Probably my most unusual find was the cast of a Panopea (clam), not that well preserved, but distinctive enough to ID. Congratulations on your finds and educating the Forum on what is reasonable to expect at this site. 

[ClearLake]

1 hour ago, Boesse said:

Your periotic bone is a nice one - but not a sperm whale. It's from a kentriodontid dolphin, likely Kentriodon or Liolithax.

Oh, nice!  Thank you very much.  Can it be narrowed down to one of the genera mentioned or is that single bone just not diagnostic enough?  Just curious if I should go on an internet search, post more pictures, etc. Thanks again. 

[bthemoose]

The tooth originally labeled as Hemipristis isn’t that and does look more like a cow shark upper tooth to me.

[Boesse]

13 hours ago, ClearLake said:

Oh, nice!  Thank you very much.  Can it be narrowed down to one of the genera mentioned or is that single bone just not diagnostic enough?  Just curious if I should go on an internet search, post more pictures, etc. Thanks again. 

It possibly could but only by a couple of people on earth!

 

11 hours ago, bthemoose said:

The tooth originally labeled as Hemipristis isn’t that and does look more like a cow shark upper tooth to me.

Agreed on that 100%. I don't think I've ever seen a Hemi from sharktooth hill. They're quite rare.

[ClearLake]

6 minutes ago, Boesse said:

It possibly could but only by a couple of people on earth!

And that certainly doesn't include me - hahaha!!! 

Based on your previous suggestions, I did find a paper (Barnes and Mitchell, 1984) that shows a Kentriodon obscurus from the Round Mt Silt of Sharkstooth Hill that looks pretty similar, but again the diagnostic features are way above my pay grade so I'll be happy to label it more generally with some notes in my database.  Thanks again for looking, I appreciate your expertise as this is pretty far outside of my Paleozoic invertebrate fossil comfort zone (much closer to my other hobby of recent skulls!)

[ClearLake]

I did take a couple of better pictures of it so I could show my brother in law (an ear surgeon) so I’ll throw them here just for posterity. 
 

[Boesse]

So there are many kentriodontids from Sharktooth Hill - two or three of which are synonymous with Kentriodon obscurus, but there are bunch of other 'form taxa' that Kellogg (1931) named from the bonebed:

[ClearLake]

7 minutes ago, Boesse said:

So there are many kentriodontids from Sharktooth Hill - two or three of which are synonymous with Kentriodon obscurus, but there are bunch of other 'form taxa' that Kellogg (1931) named from the bonebed

Interesting!  looks like a paper I'll have to dig up to read for fun.  But from the diagram you posted, mine seems most similar to Liolithax kernensis, especially in inferior view (#116).  Ah, what fun!

 

I see @ynot has this species posted in his gallery and it does look pretty similar.

[Boesse]

Liolithax kernensis was my hunch - it is quite difficult to identify these, so just bear that in mind, and especially measurements and size distinguish some of these species of Kellogg's. Here's Kellogg 1931 freely available from the Biodiversity Heritage Library: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/part/34773

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Was the bone bed exposed where you could dig directly into it?  Or were you going through tailings?

[ClearLake]

 

37 minutes ago, Uncle Siphuncle said:

Was the bone bed exposed where you could dig directly into it?

We were at Slow Curve and near as I could tell, there was no bone bed to be seen except maybe in an area that was off limits due to some professionals diggings.  But mind you, this was my first time there so I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.  The big hill that I see in lots of former pictures is totally gone.  Its more of a depression now.

[Toothie]

Yes, Ernst Quarries isn't like it used to be 5 - 10 years ago.  That's also why they reduced the cost to dig there.

 

As with anywhere, it's all luck.  My first time there, I dug for 7 hours and found almost 40 teeth (most were small).  My father found about 15. 

 

My 2nd time, I found over 140 in 8 hours (most were tiny).  There was another guy who only found 4 teeth.

 

The owner of the quarry gave me good advice.  The more dirt you move, the more teeth you'll find.

 

Out of the 4 times I've been there in the past year, the small area to the west of the parking lot has more teeth, but they are weathered and dry.  They are in dry dirt. 

 

Up on the hill to the east of the parking lot are less teeth, but they have better color and are in better condition, but they are in clay and great care should be taken to remove them from the matrix (just take home and soak in water to let the clay dissolve).  Don't try to remove them on the spot or they are likely to break.

 

It's still fun and I still recommend them.

 

There are some owners of private properties around there who occasionally let people dig.  One of those sites is super rich, but it is expensive to dig.  I don't know if I'm at liberty to give out their names anymore.  If you are interested, please, PM me and I will contact them to see if they are still doing this.

[jpc]

Is the museum in Bakersfield still running the digs?  I don't see any digs on their web site.  

[ClearLake]

11 minutes ago, jpc said:

Is the museum in Bakersfield still running the digs?  I don't see any digs on their web site.  

I'm not sure whether they still do or not, I have not seen those in a few years.  Mostly now access is obtained via the owner and his website.  I'm not sure if I can put the link in here, but if you google shark tooth hill you will undoubtedly find it or I can PM it to you if you like.

Edited May 10, 2023 by ClearLake

[Toothie]

58 minutes ago, jpc said:

Is the museum in Bakersfield still running the digs?  I don't see any digs on their web site.  

I contacted them directly a few months ago and they said they don't run digs anymore. 

[Toothie]

1 hour ago, jpc said:

Is the museum in Bakersfield still running the digs?  I don't see any digs on their web site.  

The Southern California Paleontological Society does scheduled digs twice a year on different people's private properties.  They are doing a dig this Saturday and I believe the next one is in November at a different site near Sharktooth Hill.  You need to have an active membership to the society and pay the property owner.  People need to register early as the digs fill up fast (30 people maximum, depending on the property).

[JohnJ]

4 hours ago, Toothie said:

I don't know if I'm at liberty to give out their names anymore.  If you are interested, please, PM me and I will contact them to see if they are still doing this.

 

Correct...no links or pricing.  

[digit]

17 hours ago, Toothie said:

Yes, Ernst Quarries isn't like it used to be 5 - 10 years ago.  That's also why they reduced the cost to dig there.

 

Tammy and I were there a number of years ago where we met up with @ynot who had been going there repeatedly for some time. He was our guide for that quick 1-day dig. If Tony chimes in he may be able to give a more authoritative opinion of STH past and present.

 

From what I believe I remembered about the Ernst Quarry was that the ownership of the quarry had gone through a generational ownership change. I recall hearing that there were inheritance taxes that necessitated selling off some of the property. When we were there the main bone bed at Slow Curve had been divided in two and one half was further subdivided into plots that went up for sale to individuals giving them the right to excavate their plot at their own rate. The other half was available for pay diggers. When we visited there were a couple of guys (fossil dealers) who were quickly going through a section of the pay dig area keeping only the larger teeth. I believe they were charged more but they went through a huge amount of material trying to obtain specimens ahead of a fossil show where they planned on selling them. Tony, Tammy and I did reasonably well for ourselves but collecting matrix to take home was hampered by recent rains which made sifting the matrix quite troublesome. Anyone interested in this trip report from years back can find it here:

 

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/60863-shark-tooth-hill-ernst-quarry-hunt-on-2016-01-22/

 

Since that time I've heard rumors that the last of the available Slow Curve site had been tapped out. The private plots likely still remain but the publicly accessible areas of the bone bed I believe are history. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe any digging at Slow Curve is in the less fossil rich material that was excavated from on top of the super rich bone bed that formed the bulk of the pay dig site when it was in its glory. There are still teeth to be found (as evidenced by this recent trip report) but the prime material from this Lagerstätte pocket now seems to be dug up and distributed around the world as STH shark teeth.

 

I remember hearing of another dig spot further into the quarry which had more clay and was even more of a pain to dig but that area was said to still have some prime fossil material. I can understand why the dig price has dropped as that prime pocket-o-fossils is no longer available. Maybe some day in the future another land owner in the area will open up another pay dig site with some rich material. Till then I'm glad I had the opportunity to go there (at least once) in its prime.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

P.S.: And, yes, Hemipristis teeth are exceedingly rare. I remember when Tony found one and was very excited. They are quite common in Florida and at first I could not fathom why he was so excited. The squarish deep tapering root on your tooth in question clearly indicates it is an upper anterior from Hexanchus andersoni.

 

[siteseer]

It's so weird to read that Slow Curve is virtually gone.  I first collected there in 1993 a few months after I met Bob Ernst (Rob's dad) who owed the land then.  He had invited a paleontologist who happened to be a mutual friend, to dig there and I was there to help the paleontologist fill cans and then wash matrix later.  He was collecting matrix and washing it down to a concentrate..  He would do presentations at schools in the Orange County, CA area and teach the kids how to sort through it.  With their sharp eyes they found various tiny shark and ray teeth along with some dermal denticles and other bits.  The paleontologist later sent me some concentrate to sort for helping him collect and wash it.  I still have most of that to go through (separate bags sorted by particle size).  Bob also appreciated that I was helping him and he invited me to come back and dig with him the next time I had a chance.  I think I was able to go back that December, but in the years that followed, I always seemed to get a couple of days off from work in July when Bakersfield is a roaster.  You'd have to get there just before sunrise and by around 1130am, it's too hot to dig.

 

I feel sorry for those who have gone home with such slim pickings.  Even the people who collected ten years ago were finding less than I used to find.  I wasn't the most productive digger but I did okay.  I used to find around 80 "makos" (Carcharodon hastalis and C. planus combined and they were mostly very nice ones) and a mix of other teeth and small bones.in about 5 hours.  Some of the smaller teeth and micros had a partly translucent quality that I didn't see at other quarries.  Bob once showed me a whale tooth in matrix that had a translucent tip - cool tooth.

 

Anyway, Slow Curve is an old name for that quarry and I assume LA County (Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History) has a locality number for it.  The name goes back way before Bob bought the land.  Bob owned other quarries but as has been indicated, much of the land was sold after he passed away in 2007.  Bob was a good guy.  He cared about science (donated many specimens to LACM) and his community (helped get that museum going) and he was a good friend who really appreciated it when someone did something extra for him or the museum.

[ClearLake]

@siteseer, thanks for the tidbits of history on the quarry.  I suppose like many sites, they have their heyday and then go from there.  Some sites stop producing altogether which luckily is not the case here, its just not what is used to be (so I have learned), especially with the larger teeth.  But I will say, I am going through the little bit of matrix that I brought home and it has a lot of nice little shark and especially ray teeth as well as other interesting bits.  And as you described, the colors and translucence of many of them are quite beautiful.  I only wish I had brought more of it back, I was pretty limited in what I could bring in my luggage on the plane.  In hindsight, I would have liked to have had a five gallon bucket of water with me at the quarry to do a quick wash/sieve on site to concentrate it so that the volume I could bring back was fossils and not mostly fine silt.  I found when I washed it at home that I retained about 5% of the matrix volume to pick through and about 15-20% of that volume was fossils (mostly bone bits). 

 

I also will add that the little bit I was able to talk with Rob while at the quarry he seemed very nice also and offered what insights he could.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Some really pretty teeth there,

And the colours are beauriful. 

[Rock Hound]

Any site can be searched out, for the most part; with enough time and effort.  Once a place becomes famous, and if it's open to the public at a reasonable cost, or even better - free; it's just a matter of time.

 

I have daydreamed, about looking for fossils there.  The teeth found there, are so nice.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Rock Hound

[Rock Hound]

@ClearLake, I like that you were able to increase your collection of fossils at that site; by finding so many pieces of fossilized bone.  It adds to the day's haul, and some of those pieces of bone have nice coloration. 

 

Some people are only interested in finding large teeth, but those bones tell a story too.  Be thankful that you got to visit and collect, at a famous site.

 

Cheers.