What is it that makes our lands valuable and worth managing and protecting? There are many reasons to list, but this week I want to focus on Paleontological resources.<\/p>\n
I used to think the drive to visit my sister in Southern California was quite boring.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think there was much to look at in terms of scenery and Interstate 5 isn\u2019t very curvy.\u00a0 Curves are fun, right?\u00a0 I did what most people do to prepare for a long boring drive: make a mix-tape\/playlist of\u00a0 driving music, borrow some books on tape from the library (I say \u201cbooks on tape\u201d and \u201cmix-tape\u201d even though we all know I\u2019m talking about CDs because \u201cbooks on CD\u201d and \u201cmix-CD\u2019s\u201d just doesn\u2019t have the same ring to it), charge your phone so you can call a friend on the way, and of course stock up on snacks.\u00a0 I will go a long way to distract myself from the monotony of a long haul.<\/p>\n
My time spent out in the field has certainly changed my view of the stretch of land between the Bay-Area and Southern California.\u00a0 Now when I look out the window I\u2019ll have something else on the brain. \u00a0To see part of the reason why, let\u2019s take a look back in time.\u00a0 65 million years ago California\u2019s coastline looked quite different than it does today.\u00a0 I like Richard P. Hilton\u2019s description in Dinosaurs and Other Mesozoic Reptiles of California<\/em>: \u201cBy the Late Cretaceous, the western edge of the Sierra Nevada had been eroded back and the sea was flooding into the areas of what are now the low Sierran foothills\u2026 Numerous fossils were deposited offshore from the ancestral Sierra Nevada in a marine environment between 80 and 65 million years ago\u201d.<\/p>\n Parts of the lands I\u2019ve been helping to manage happen to be in the Moreno formation of the Panoche Hills (west side of the San Joaquin Valley). The formation contains the highest diversity of organisms from the late Cretaceous period in the western United States.\u00a0 During the course of my internship I had the opportunity to explore the Moreno shale formation and discover some of the fossilized treasures it yields.\u00a0 Among other things, these fossils provide us with a wealth of information to better understand evolution and the make-up of past ecosystems.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Click on the pictures below to learn more.<\/p>\n\n\t\t