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A construction project at San Pedro High School in Los Angeles, California, turned up millions of rare fossils dating back nearly nine million years.
In 2021, a construction project began to upgrade the utilities at the school. While workers were digging through the limestone, they discovered three separate fossil beds underneath the school's property.
One of the beds dates back 120,000 years, while the other two contain fossils from nearly nine million years ago. The fossils include mammals and marine animals from when the area was underwater.
"The discoveries capturing the most interest have been a number of juvenile megalodon shark teeth – the largest shark that ever existed – sabretooth salmon jaw bones, sea turtle bones, baleen whale vertebrae, seabird bones, many dolphin bones including the back of a dolphin skull and dolphin ear bones, and fossilized dolphin coprolites (poop), which contain dozens of small fish bones," Dr. Wayne Bischoff, director of cultural resources for Envicom Corporation, told Fox News.
The fascinating fossils have provided a great hands-on learning experience for the students. While they are not allowed onto the construction sites to look for new fossils, they have been tasked with helping paleontologists sort and identify the fossils that have been unearthed.
"Students will play a larger role in the future as we enter into a new phase for the discovery, which will involve making educational displays, murals, and showcasing some of the recovered fossils," Bischoff explained.