Eleven-thousand years after extinction, Ice Age pygmy mammoths were making news in 1994. Last summer--in a discovery that one expert called "spectacular"--scientists unearthed the most complete skeleton of the species ever found anywhere in the world.
While paleontologists rejoiced, you were probably less interested in the pygmy mammoth than the fact that it was discovered on Santa Rosa Island, a mere 30 miles off the Ventura County coast. Is it possible, you wondered? Could the county be a prehistoric fossil graveyard?
"It's true," said Ray Meisenheimer, a longtime Ventura fossil hunter. "The county is sitting on a fossil bed. Practically anyplace you go, you can find a fossil."
You may be inspired right now to start digging for dinosaur bones in your back yard--wouldn't a Allosaurus rib look great on the coffee table?--but postpone excavation until you read this. It takes more than a field trip to "Jurassic Park" to become a fossil hunter.
"You can't learn fossil hunting at the movies," Meisenheimer, 78, said with a chuckle.
The education of a fossil hunter requires a study of geology, zoology and botany. Which is why no self-respecting fossil hunter would ever look for dinosaur remains in Ventura County: Dinosaurs were extinct for perhaps 50 million years before the county emerged from the sea.
"Fossil hunting is a great hobby," said Bruno Benson, Meisenheimer's 80-year-old buddy and curator of the tiny Ventura Earth Science Museum. "But you really have to know what you're doing."
To a fossil hunter, fossils are records of life on Earth, helping explain why some species vanished and others survived. Seldom are complete remains found. Instead, fossil hunters have to use bits of mineralized bone or shell or impressions embedded in rock to decipher the past. While some fossils literally can be picked off the ground, the rare ones, those that will be displayed under glass, are hidden, but sometimes only centimeters beneath the surface. A fossil hunter has to be a detective, following clues and hunches, but relying on knowledge.
Fossil hunting also rewards hunters by giving them a deeper perspective on their own place in the universe.
"Knowing the past gives me a feeling of continuity," said Ed Mercurio, a paleontologist with expertise in fossils found in the county. "I can be in a place and know exactly what it was like millions of years ago and what the animals faced for survival. It's like seeing things in 3-D."
Paleontologists are the major leaguers among fossil hunters. Working under government permits allowing them to hunt on public land, they bag the dramatic prehistoric trophies, the Cro-Magnon skull, the T-Rex jawbone, even the Santa Rosa Island pygmy mammoth. Although amateur fossil hunters have made major discoveries, county hunters go after smaller game: fossils usually no bigger than pocket change.
This disappoints many beginners, but it shouldn't. Fossil hunters will tell you that size has nothing to do with the thrill of discovery. Some hunters, Bruno Benson included, even prefer micro-fossils. The rush comes from finding a rare fossil, but even an ordinary fossil, no matter how small, can excite the hunter.
"When you find something that's 5 or 10 million years old--something that was once alive --and when you're the first person who's ever seen it, it's just the greatest feeling," Meisenheimer said.
A fossil doesn't even have to be rare to be prized. "If it's your first fossil, it's very valuable to you," said Dave Champion, an Oxnard fossil hunter.
You could read a few books, buy a good map and become a fossil hunter on your own, but the best way to forge ahead is by getting in touch with any of the three clubs in the county.
Your first lesson will include some basic facts: The Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago; life began a billion years or so later. As many as 50 million species of plants and animals may have existed; scientists have named and described only about 1.7 million, but you are not required to memorize all of them.
The oldest fossils found in the county are starfish and sand dollars in the Pine Mountain area north of Ojai. They date to the Eocene Period, perhaps 55 million years ago, when seawater covered most of Southern California. About 25 million years ago, underwater volcanoes and tectonic forces began forming mountain ranges, lifting the county from the sea. Ice ages occurred every few hundred-thousand years, raising ocean levels and inundating the county. Glaciers, however, never paid a visit.
The county's aquatic history left a large assortment of deep-water marine fossils. Some of the best specimens discovered in the county were actually found on what were once ancient sand beaches in a Simi Valley canyon: giant alligators, whale skeletons as long as 40 feet, and an extremely rare seven-inch tooth from an ancestor of a great white shark. Today in the same area, basketball-sized vertebrae from 15-million-year-old baleen whales await the knowing fossil hunter.
