Forest ranger stumbles onto garden of ancient beasts in California foothills [View all]

[hunter]

A park ranger wandering through a petrified forest in California has unearthed a trove of prehistoric fossils, including a stunningly preserved mastodon skull and the remains of a 400-pound (181 kilograms) monster salmon, SFGate reported.

Paleontologists unearthed dozens of fossil species near the Mokelumne River watershed in the foothills of the Sierra mountains southeast of Sacramento. The fossil site, which dates back roughly 10 million years to the Miocene epoch, is one of the most significant such troves ever discovered in the Golden State.

"Few other fossil discoveries like this exist in California," Russell Shapiro, a professor of paleontology and stratigraphy at California State University, Chico, told Chico State Today.

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https://www.livescience.com/bones-ancient-beasts-california-fossil-forest.html

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/fossil-find-california-ebmud-mastodon-bones-16192070.php

The Miocene is my favorite epoch in general, especially here in California. All sorts of stuff was happening.

Forget human history, as a time traveler that's where I'd go first.