Bone Bonanza : Archeologists Really Dig Whale of a Find, Perhaps 9 Million Years Old

Using heavy cranes, archeologists on Friday lifted a 35-foot whale skeleton from the ground where it has lain for perhaps 9 million years.

Discovered at a construction site on the outskirts of Lake Forest, the baleen whale fossil is a rare find--a nearly complete skeleton that will give scientists a clearer picture of the planet’s prehistoric past, said excited archeologists.

“This fossil is in wonderful shape,” said Diana Weir, co-owner of RMW Paleo Associates in Mission Viejo. “It’s very rare that we find them like this. There are only two or three that I can think of in Orange County.”

Completing a two-week excavation, archeologists loaded the plaster-encased fossil segments onto a flatbed truck and sent them to the Natural History Foundation of Orange County. There, workers will finish freeing the fossil from the rock and earth.

The whale fossil was unearthed in a field that is being cleared to build a recreational vehicle storage lot on Baffin Bay Drive, a vacant cul-de-sac off Bake Parkway.

The discovery was made by Marilyn Morgan, one of three co-owners of RMW Paleo Associates, a paleontology firm hired by Baker Ranch Properties to monitor the grading.

“As soon as I saw it, I knew it was bone,” Morgan said. “I could tell it was very long, and I realized it was something bigger than I could handle alone. It was very exciting.”

The fossil is between 6 million and 9 million years old, Weir said.

Millions of years ago, when much of South County was thousands of feet under the ocean, several whale species swam off coastal waters. However, the fist-size ear bone needed to distinguish them is usually too fragmented to piece together, Weir said.

“The ear bone on this fossil is easily distinguishable,” she said. “It’s definitely a baleen whale.”

More than a half-dozen workers spent the last two weeks chipping away at the fossil with instruments as delicate as a dentist’s pick.

Once uncovered, the fossilized whale bones were covered with layers of newspaper, burlap and plaster for protection.

“We don’t clean it off completely,” Weir said. “We take the fossil out in pieces. The rest of the work can be done in the lab.”

Small fossils of vegetation such as leaves have also been found near the whale. Often, multiple species are discovered in close proximity, she said.

RMW Paleo Associates is also working on construction sites in nearby Bee Canyon and Temecula, where mastodons and other Ice Age species are being discovered, Weir said.