College Group to Bone Up on Fossils

Finally dealing with thousands of artifacts and bones languishing in a warehouse, Orange County supervisors on Tuesday picked Cal State Fullerton to sort and display fossils found over the years during housing, highway and other construction.

A Cal State Fullerton faculty group would take charge of million-year-old whale bones and other treasures that have filled to overflowing a shabby, metal-walled warehouse behind barbed wire in Santa Ana.

The decision by supervisors not only sets a new course for the relics but also could be a springboard that leads to a county historical museum, said John D. Cooper, a Cal State Fullerton professor of geology.

“I’m confident that we will eventually find a home for these artifacts,” Cooper said.

For more than a decade, county government has required that artifacts from construction projects remain in the county. But it has never provided a scientific system to sort them or a museum to exhibit them.

A proposal several years ago to create a natural history museum was derailed. In 1992, the nonprofit Natural History Foundation of Orange County went bankrupt even with $550,000 in funding.

Meanwhile, relics continue to pour into the warehouse, where thousands are stuffed in bulging, aging boxes. Dozens of cracked, eroding plaster jackets containing rare fossils lie outside in a parking lot.

Cooper and Phyllisa Eisentraut, an anthropology instructor, probably will oversee the three-year, $400,000 project. The program would be administered by the Cal State Fullerton Foundation, the university’s fund-raising arm.

The county first must negotiate a contract with the university, said John W. Sibley, director of the county Public Facilities and Resources Department. The bulk of the funding would come from a $264,000 federal grant and $50,000 taken from the county’s Harbors, Beaches and Parks fund.

If the contract is approved, Cooper said, he and Eisentraut will research the availability of major grants to help fund a future museum to exhibit artifacts and fossils.

In addition, Eisentraut said, the university is in a good position to link up with elementary and high school students to introduce the world of prehistoric artifacts using the county’s collection.

In approving Cal State Fullerton, supervisors rejected a recommendation by county staff to choose Discovery Works Inc., an Irvine archeological and digital design firm, as the primary consultant. Supervisors said they favored Fullerton because it is an academic facility.

“We’re certainly disappointed,” said Beth Padon, a Discovery Works spokeswoman, “but not unhappy.” She said the decision marks “a new era” for safekeeping the county’s artifacts, and for that she was pleased.