Ferreting Out Fossils Under L.A.

Standing at the junction of Los Angeles’ past and future, paleontologist Mike Morris searches for 8,000-year-old fish fossils with a pick hammer while bulldozers roar behind him, excavating what will be the subway’s Universal City station.

Work in the 85-foot-deep tunnel is a paleontologist’s dream. Without this kind of construction, scientists would never have access to long-buried layers of earth that reveal the vastly different Los Angeles of millions of years ago, said Bruce Lander, president of Van Nuys-based Paleo Environmental Associates. Lander displayed and talked about some of the finds at the Universal City site Friday.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority contracted with Paleo in 1987 to have on-site paleontological field monitors like Morris work side by side with construction crews during excavation. The nearly 2,000 specimens that have been unearthed, preserved and cataloged offer clues to an L.A. story like no other: Before the asphalt jungle, rush-hour gridlock and suburban sprawl, what is now downtown was half a mile under the ocean, and herds of mammoth-like creatures called mastodons roamed the San Fernando Valley.

Paleo set up study sites at four locations--Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, Hollywood Boulevard between Western Avenue and Vine Street, the Universal City station and the North Hollywood tunnel. What they found offers a vivid picture of the area’s changing landscape and animal life.

“Finding, dating and studying these fossils or pieces of ancient wood is often the only way we have of knowing what the climate and environment was like years ago,” Morris said.

At the Wilshire-Vermont station, fossils of more than 50 different fish species, most of them extinct, have been found. Until a million years ago, the Los Angeles Basin up to the San Andreas fault was under the ocean, Lander said.

At the Universal City field office, Lander gingerly handled the skeleton of a fossilized extinct herring, its delicate bones so well preserved it seemed to be etched by an artist’s hand into the shale. Some of the marine specimens discovered at this Metro Rail site are the first fossil records of the species they represent.

Feet, toes and teeth of bison, camels, horses and mastodons nearly 10,000 years old were found in the North Hollywood tunnel. Lander said the Valley floor was probably covered by grass and shrubs as herds of these creatures--most of them larger than their modern counterparts--wandered freely where shopping malls, car dealerships and restaurants sit today.

State and federal laws require agencies involved in construction to study and preserve any historically significant materials they find. A paleontologically rich region that includes the La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles has been the site of construction-related fossil discoveries since the 1800s, Lander said.

Morris said construction workers have been told to keep an eye out for fossils, and they often make the discoveries. The MTA has set up an incentive program for significant finds.

Morris shatters any National Geographic-inspired visions of the meditative paleontologist working in quiet, remote environs. Cranes and earth-movers roll by. Large pieces of lumber, thrown down by workers above him, hit the ground a few feet away.

Surrounded by heavy machinery, how does he do his painstaking work, armed only with a small pick hammer?

“Very carefully,” he said, laughing. “You have to keep your head up.”