‘Entire ecosystem’ of fossils 8.7m years old found under Los Angeles high school
On Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that researchers had discovered two sites on the campus of San Pedro high school under which fossils including those of a saber-toothed salmon and a megalodon, the gigantic prehistoric shark, were buried.
According to the outlet, the two sites where the fossils were found include an 8.7m-year-old bone bed from the Miocene era and a 120,000-year-old shell bed from the Pleistocene era.
In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Richard Behl, a California State University at Long Beach geologist, said that researchers were testing the chemical and mineral composition of the fossils.
“We got to find clues and piece those clues together,” Behl said, adding that fossils from the Miocene era were encased in diatomite, a sedimentary rock composed of the fossilized skeletal remains of single-cell aquatic algae. According to Behl, the diatomite indicates that the area was rich with algae, which helped foster a rich ecosystem that comprised various marine creatures.
Echoing Behl, Wayne Bischoff, the director of cultural resources at Envicom Corporation, told LAist: “It’s the entire ecosystem from an age that’s gone … We have all this evidence to help future researchers put together what an entire ecology looked like nine million years ago. That’s really rare.”
