'Entire ecosystem' of 8.7-million-year-old fossils found under Los Angeles high school | Los Angeles

Marine fossils dating back 8.7 million years have been discovered beneath a high school in South Los Angeles.

On Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported, Reported Researchers have discovered two sites on the San Pedro High School campus where fossils are buried, including those of a saber-toothed salmon and a megalodon, a giant prehistoric shark.

According to the site, the two sites where the fossils were found include an 8.7 million-year-old bone layer from the Miocene era and a 120,000-year-old shell layer from the Pleistocene era.

The discoveries were made between June 2022 and July 2024, according to LAist. Reports.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Richard Biehl, a geologist from California State University, Long Beach, said that researchers were testing the chemical and mineral composition of the fossils.

“We were able to find evidence and tie that evidence together,” Behl said, adding that the Miocene fossils were surrounded by diatomite, a sedimentary rock. component The fossilized remains of single-celled aquatic algae. According to Biehl, the diatomites indicate that the area was once rich in algae, which helped foster a rich ecosystem of diverse marine organisms.

In a similar vein, Wayne Bischoff, director of cultural resources at Invicom Corporation, told Lost: “It’s an entire ecosystem from a bygone era… We have all this evidence to help future researchers piece together what the entire ecosystem looked like nine million years ago. This is really rare.”

Images published on LAist and the Los Angeles Times include fossil vertebrae and a rib bone from an extinct species of dolphin, the jawbone of an extinct saber-toothed salmon, which had fangs that extended from its mouth, and fossils of hundreds of small fish vertebrae.

Talk to “There was an underwater channel that carried material from the shallow water to the deep water and there was volcanic activity somewhere in the vicinity,” said Austin Hendy, assistant curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

“It was a big surprise to everyone when they started digging these trenches to extract the fossils of these fish,” Hindi added.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the fossils were distributed to research and educational institutions, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, California State University, Channel Islands, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

in statement The discovery of the fossils “has ushered in a new era of focused study that will bring notoriety to this community and this high school,” Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told KABC.