L. A. subway workers have a bone to pick ( and then some)
11,000- year- old fossils are starting to pile up
As workers shoveled dirt from the future site of a subway station, something caught Francisco Palacios’ eye. He got down on his knees, brushed excess dirt away, dug a little deeper with a shovel and unearthed the fossilized skull of a young mammoth from the Ice Age.
Discoveries like this are cropping up every few months as the city expands its Metro subway lines, digging through earth that has remained undisturbed for tens of thousands of years. Across the city, workers have been uncovering fossilized remains of ancient animals — from extinct camels to giant sloths — that once roamed southern California.
Palacios spied the latest find in late November as he monitored an excavation 15 feet underground, the future site of the Wilshire/ La Brea subway station. His work keeping an eye out for fossils is required by California law. In addition to the usual complement of engineers and train conductors, the county’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has added paleontologists to its staff to preserve and study the Ice Age bones.
Construction on the first phase of the Wilshire section — known as the Purple Line — began in 2014. The first fossils were found two years later in soil dating to the last Ice Age, which ended more than 10,000 years ago.
The first find at the La Brea site was a 3- foot section of an adult mammoth tusk uncovered just before Thanksgiving. A few days later came teeth belonging to a mastodon, followed by the nearly intact skull of a young mammoth that Palacios found.
Both mammoths and mastodons are ancient relatives of elephants. Ashley Leger, a paleontologist leading the operation, says they were plentiful during the Ice Age, when the L. A. area was covered in grasslands and forests.
It’s difficult to precisely date any of the finds because soil layers don’t provide specific information, but Leger says the fossils can be placed in the Pleistocene epoch, which makes them more than 11,000 years old.
“Every fossil fills a gap,” Leger said. “It tells a story of what came before us — and maybe what’s to come.”