Lessons to Learn After Fossils Are History : Caretakers Should Display More Caution--and Put on Display Some of What Remains

The accidental disposal of more than a thousand fossils stored at a Newport Beach school has caused sorrow and embarrassment. They were tossed in the trash. The obvious lesson to be learned is to be more careful next time and improve communications.

The fossils were discovered during excavation of a reservoir in east Costa Mesa. The importance of such findings is widely recognized; state law requires public agencies and developers of large projects to monitor their projects for artifacts and investigate the importance of what they find. These remnants of history can help draw a picture of Southern California before humans arrived, or at least before they started writing down what they found.

Among the items dumped were a 200-pound skull of a now-extinct horse, and the bones of bison. The Mesa Consolidated Water District spent $90,000 hiring paleontologists to inspect any fossils found during the reservoir excavation. For the past three years, the bones, skull, pine cones and other items were stored at Lindbergh Elementary School, which is closed.

Workers sent to clean the school saw 15 boxes filled with what they thought were rocks and other worthless items and got rid of them. A water district spokeswoman said the boxes were labeled, with an inventory of contents inside each one. The Newport-Mesa Unified School District said there were no indications that the boxes contained anything important.

Scientists said the fossils dated to the Pleistocene Era, ranging from 2 million to 10,000 years ago. Fortunately, some specimens had been shipped to experts for study. Now a bit less than half of what was a 3,000-specimen collection remains.

One way for the water district to salvage something from this embarrassment would be to display some of its remaining fossils--soon. That would put county residents in touch with one chapter of their history.