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| Margaret Carrino Points Out Whale's Scapula |
The fossil we are currently excavating at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law (TJSL) project site is the partial skeleton of a gray whale (Eschrichtius sp.) including the rostrum, left lower jaw, and left shoulder blade, as well as numerous vertebrae and ribs.
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| Sarah Siren and Whale's Rib |
The fossil bones occur over an area measuring approximately 15 feet wide by 30 feet long. Their distribution suggests the skeleton probably decomposed on the ancient sea floor before being scattered by currents. This fossil is the only record of a Pleistocene marine mammal known from San Diego County and provides evidence that gray whales lived off our coast in the distant past. The geologic age of the specimen is not precisely known, but is between 200,000 and 500,000 years old. The whale fossil was discovered in a sandstone layer approximately 10 feet below a different sandstone layer in which the TJSL mammoth was buried. Preliminary analysis suggests that the fossil whale may be at least 100,000 years older than the mammoth.
Gray whales are a rather distinctive group of baleen whales that are known to undergo long, annual, coastal migrations from their summer feeding grounds in the north Pacific to their breeding and nursery sites in Baja California. The fossil record of gray whales is very incomplete, which makes the new specimen discovered at the project site so important. Future studies of the TJSL gray whale will provide new information to better understand the evolutionary history of this truly unique California native.
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| Kesler Randall Points Out Whale's Jawbone |
Dean Rudy Hasl was elated by the latest find and said: "As the father of American paleontology, Thomas Jefferson would be ecstatic that the school that carries his name has such paleontological discoveries."
See Story on Paleontologist Pat Sena