Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Paleontology
                                                                                
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CAMEL EXCAVATION                             Presented by the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Paleontology Society
A Camel Excavation We Have Underway
 

Buried fossils are excavated or dug up from the ground for study by researchers and display in museums.  Such recovery of often fragile remains also ensures their protection from weathering and erosion.  Digging a bone out of the dirt may seem simple, but paleontologists are careful to preserve the fossil and learn from it as they excavate.

This excavation is unearthing the partial skeleton of a 1 million-year-old Pleistocene-age extinct camel (genus Camelops) from sandy and silty stream deposits.

Surveying and placing a 1 m grid over the fossil layer are used to photograph and reference where each bone lies.  This enables the paleontologist to determine how the carcass of the camel was scattered after death, possibly by carnivores or stream currents, and the local conditions at the time of burial.

GIS is used to record the location of the excavation.

 

 

 

  

The first step in uncovering a fossil is to carefully remove the matrix (dirt and rock) that covers it.  This may mean just dusting it off, or removing part of a mountainside.

To undertake this excavation, a CEQA permit to evaluate environmental implications, was required.

This excavation has been underway for two seasons.  In the desert, summer conditions are too harsh to continue digging with a full crew.  And, the liquid preservatives used evaporate before they penetrate and harden the fragile porous bone.

  
The field crew uses a variety of tools to carefully remove the overburden and begin to locate and isolate the fossils.  They can be as small as a brush or dental pick, or as large as a jack hammer.

Here we see why small hand tools are used.  In addition to the partial skeleton of a young  adult  Camelops, there is another juvenile camel legbone, invertebrate burrows called ichnites and rodent remains at the site.

A highly experienced crew works on this complex fossil deposit.



  
  
Here we see the camelops excavation at sunset.



















For a more detailed description of Camelops in Anza-Borrego, see "Extinct Camels and Llamas", by S.David Webb, Kesler Randall and George T. Jefferson, in "Fossil Treasures of the Anza Borrego Desert", George T  Jefferson and Lowell Lindsay, editors, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego California, 2006.





  
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