No Bones About It, Fossils Need a Home : * A Museum Would Connect the Public With the County’s Unfolding Prehistoric Past

A fossil record in Orange County? Most people don’t think in geological terms about this area, since most everything on the landscape is so new. The idea of a prehistoric trail stands in sharp contrast with what we see around us: vast new housing tracts, man-made lakes and shopping malls lined with palm trees so impatiently planted that there wasn’t time to grow them on site.

Of course, people really familiar with the county have a deeper knowledge of its human history and are aware that it has rich traditions. Yet few among them even have much awareness of an ancient past of the land, now surfacing quite wonderfully in South County.

This turns out to be one of the interesting byproducts of the excavation work under way on the Foothill Transportation Corridor. It is revealing a historical record of the county going back millions of years. Experts have said they are making some spectacular discoveries among at least 3,000 fossils dug up in Mission Viejo. There are previously unknown species of crab fossils, the first found in Southern California, new whale species and a forest of avocados that suggests a different climate and layout in the ancient past. In prehistoric times, marine mammals swam in a warm, shallow sea, and subtropical plants were thriving onshore.

This exciting record is surfacing because of interesting requirements: A county ordinance and state law require developers to hire qualified archeologists and paleontologists to monitor construction work that is likely to show fossils. These discoveries suggest an interesting local history, one that should be preserved.

Ironically, a natural history museum in Aliso Viejo that might have housed these discoveries recently closed soon after it opened because of inadequate funding. It was to have been a display venue for some of the fossil record. But since, these findings have been placed in 100 cardboard boxes, stored in Santa Ana.

There ought to be some way, perhaps through a public-private venture, of putting these interesting records on display. Lawrence G. Barnes, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, notes that there is an interest among the public in general, but he laments that the public is not getting a chance to view these artifacts here.

The history of Orange County didn’t begin with the arrival of Disneyland, or the Angels. The public ought to have a connection with the past. And the county should have a museum to make that possible.