A huge deposit of marine fossils found under San Pedro High School

Hidden beneath concrete at San Pedro High School, construction workers found a buried secret — thousands of marine fossils echoing Palos Verdes Peninsula’s ancient geological past.

Researchers uncovered two distinct sites on campus where new buildings were under construction: a bone bed dating back 8.7 million years in the Miocene era and a shell bed about 120,000 years old from the Pleistocene era.

With construction of the buildings now completed, scientists are focusing on learning what they can from the fossils that date back several million years.

“There’s never been this type of density of fossils ever found at a site like this before in California,” said Wayne Bischoff, the director of cultural resources at Envicom Corp., who managed the collection of the fossils that were excavated. “It’s the largest marine bone bed found in Los Angeles and Orange counties.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-09-13/a-huge-deposit-of-marine-fossils-found-under-san-pedro-high-school