Paleontology

In 1993, I moved home from college, and stayed with my family for a year. As many may attest, your first year out of school is sort of in limbo. I had went away for school, and being back in the tiny farming community I was from was getting me nowhere fast.

I had spent a lot of time reading, and one of the books I decided to read was Jurrassic park, because that summer, the movie would come out, and I wanted to read it before the movie changed my view of it - the book had been so well recommended.

My stepmother saw my interest in the book and movie, and had heard that nearby (about 30 miles) there was a recent fossil find.

Chowchilla/Madera County had arranged to dig a 35 foot deep 16x16 acre drump just off the Interstate 99. While digging out a new cell, they reached their depth and discovered something that would change my life - at least for the next few years.

To dig so deep, and so much, the city dump team used giant earth-moves, which would scrape the ground and therefore would be able to dig long, flat stretches - which was great for a dump. When the team hit their depth in 26C, they found a long purple streak behind the scraping, and that is when the City Geologist - who sprinted when he heard the knews, suspecting it was something unique - discovered that it was the side-effect of some fossils which were crushed under the giant mechanical shovel.

There was a law that said that either you shut down a dig or you pay to have the fossils removed if you ever find any. So after a few schools got to come in and volunteer (where my step mother heard of this) a team from the School of Paleontology from UC Berkeley came out and set up an official dig, but since this was the sticks, they city strong armed it, and they were forced to extract and evacuate, instead of properly archive and safely remove the fossils.

When I got there, I was a volunteer. It was summer. It was Central Valley Fresno...think 106. I got sunburned badly, but loved it. I knew in my bones I wanted to do this much more than bike around my home town, hang out with my parents, or work at a job.

So, I went out every day for the next 2 years.

I started as a volunteer, and later because I am so talkative, I became a trainer for volunteers, and was occasionally tasked to perform tours for the media, local politicians, and visiting schools. Along the way, I made great friends, became close with the core dig team, and eventually, they offered me a job.

Towards the end of the dig, I didn't want it to end, but it was inevitable; the trash had to go somewhere, and we were out of time. Afterwards, we took the fossils and toured them around California. The best venue was the Fresno State Fair, where we had a 20 day exibit, served 3000 kids for all the local schools, and I trained 45 tourguides, as well as developed the exhibit, authoring the tour, and acting as the main resource for knowledgeable answers about anything that you might see.

The travelling museum had a giant mammoth skull, a T-Rex skull, an Allosaurus forearm, some Sabre-tooth and Scimitar-tooth skulls and teeth, A Mastadon tusk, giant Trilobites, and a slew of the fossils we actually found in our desert excursion.

Now you are probably wondering what we found out there.

750,000 years ago, the San Juaquin valley had a giant mississipi-like river running through it. The detritus from the mountains and hills collected in organic sump-like environments ... wide spans in huge oxbows where the dead would wash up. This was our dig.

We found 15ft tall Columbian Mammoths - with 11 ft long tusks; we found giant 9ft tall ground sloths - yeti-like beings who's giant hook-thumb was a distinct find; 3 toed horses; odd, 3 or 5 toed deer; a Scimitar cat - like a sabre, only thicker in front, and smaller in back; Sabre-teeth cats; A variety of unnamed leg bones, NOT connected to the hip-bones... and a TON of turtle shells...

If you ever get a chance to visit a digsite, or have the ability to visit the Berkeley Campus, you will get a down and dirty view of the history of the earth. It was amazing when I helped - using my paintbrush - to unearth a lower back leg from a species that had NEVER been seen by a human before. Every volunteer had joy as they made small discoveries. It is a unique and enjoyable, and highly relaxing experience.