After Long Rest, One Last Voyage

The fossil remains of a whale, found at a development site near Dana Point and believed to be those of a mammal that died more than 6 million years ago, were given their final protective coatings Tuesday in preparation for transport to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

The remains, which included the skull, shoulder, fins, ribs and tail, apparently are those of a 30-foot whale that, like modern-day gray whales, had no teeth but fed by filtering small sea creatures through a lattice-like, bony arrangement called the baleen.

Other than that, its species is unknown, according to Dr. Lawrence Barnes, curator of marine fossils and head of the vertebrate paleontology department at the Los Angeles museum.

“Similar fossils are found in Orange County every two or three years,” he said, “but not very often do we get them with all the different parts so close together, almost like a complete animal. Usually, they are scattered around.”

Not Like Today’s Whales

He said the museum has in storage more than half a dozen specimens, all of as-yet-unknown species and all awaiting further study to determine their origins.

“All we can say is, they are not gray whales or blue whales or humpbacks or anything else we know today,” he said.

The new fossil “probably will not be prepared for public display any time in the near future,” Barnes said, “because we have three whale fossils on display now, and we’re about 10 years behind in studies on the ones in storage.”

The find was made on the site of a residential development known as Antigua at Monarch Beach, according to Steve Goolian, spokesman for the developers, H.R. Remington Properties of Laguna Niguel.

Grading for the project was being monitored by Charles Reeves of Scientific Resource Surveys Inc. of Huntington Beach, who was on the site in conformance with a 1977 county ordinance designed to protect Indian artifacts, fossils and other materials from being bulldozed into oblivion.

Tuesday, workers finished wrapping the fossils in burlap and plaster for loading on a truck that will take them to Los Angeles Thursday, Goolian said. The developer is paying the estimated $10,000 recovery costs, he said.

Last week’s discovery, like numerous similar finds over the last decade, dates to a time when much of Orange County, particularly the southern area, was submerged and populated with ancestors of modern sharks, whales, walruses and other sea creatures.

One of the most spectacular discoveries occurred in September, 1980, when the intact fossil of a four-tusked walrus was unearthed near San Clemente. A month later, at another nearby construction site, the relatively intact skeleton of a 50-foot baleen whale was recovered.

The discoveries have continued during the last five years as developers have continued to bulldoze home and office sites in the south county, yielding remains of four more whales--one of which was about 70 feet in length--and the remains of various other ocean creatures, such as the ancestor of the great white shark.

Baleen Whale (cf. Balaenopteridae) This ancient whale swam the waters of the Pacific 6 to 9 million years ago. It differed from other whales by the way it ingested food--through a filter in its mouth rather than with teeth. Average Length: 65-70 feet

Average Weight: About 50 tons. Discovery Site: This 30-foot specimen found May 7 by Charles reeves, part of scientific survey team monitoring construction work at a homebuilding site northeast of Stinehill Road and Niguel Road in Laguna Niguel.

Depth: Found 25 feet beneath the surface in adobe-like layer called the Capistrano Formation, once the bottom of a prehistoric sea.

Age: 6 to 9 million years