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Sharktooth Hill Fossil Hunting Video:

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Sharktooth Hill Fossil Hunt and Presenting at the 2019 NAPC Conference

The Fossil Project invited me to speak at a session at the North American Paleontological Convention in Riverside California. The NAPC is a paleontology conference that is hosted every 4 to 5 years. I'ts a week of everything Paleontology!

This time, The Fossil Project arranged for a few sessions of amateur paleontologists to discuss and highlight the importance of amateurs in the field of paleontology and also to discuss the goals and accomplishments of the Fossil Project. All of The Fossil Project sessions were wonderful and informative. It was also nice to meet new paleontologists and reconnect with past aquaintances.

Sharktooth Hill Fossil Hunt

Before attending the conference, I decided, with a few other friends, to go a couple days early and visit Ernst quarries in Bakersfield (Sharktooth Hill Area) for a chance at finding finding fossil shark teeth and other Miocene fossils from the Temblor formation.

The first day I mainly stuck to hunting the overturned bits of formation around Sharktooth hill. Last trip here this strategy worked very well and I found a bunch of fossils. This time, I couldn't find the correct spot in the formation and ended up with very little. The second day we all dug in the actual formation, which is a hard packed clay. One pries out a small section at a time and slowly breaks it apart. The fossils from the formation are VERY fragile until they dry out, so extra care must be taken no to break anything.

This strategy worked out great. We all found nice fossils. Lee and Victor both found nice C. hastalis and C. planus teeth as well as a nice sampling of other sharks in the area. I also found the standard shark teeth as well as the end section of a large baleen whale jaw. It took a while to excavate it, and it ended up crumbling apart, but it glued together nicely!

After the trip to Bakersfield we headed down to Riverside for the NAPC conference where we were all scheduled speak at The Fossil Project sessions. Finally, after the NAPC conference, I stayed for an extra few days and checkout out the museums in LA, including the La Brea Tar Pits, which is an amazing ongoing excavation!

A BIG thanks goes out to The Fossil Project for setting up the sessions, logistics, and inviting me out for the NAPC 2019!

For more information on Fossil Hunting at the Ernst Quarries and Sharktooth Hill in general, visit the Sharktooth Hill Page.

Images of the fossil hunt and the trip

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