Ancient clams offer a uniquely detailed fossil record. As they build their shells, layer by layer, they preserve clues to the climate they once lived in.
Tag: fossils
Winter Issue 2022
Explore Cowell Ranch, a Quiet Beach with Fossils
Cowell Ranch Beach near Half Moon Bay is an ideal stop for people interested in geology, marine mammals, and birds.
Stewardship
Ancient Whale Bones and Megalodon Shark Teeth Unearthed in East Bay
A dam retrofit project reveals a treasure trove from the time when California had a vast inland sea.
Spring Issue 2009
Dinosaur Plants
While living dinosaurs are nowhere to be found in California these days, you can see recognizable descendants of plants that lived with them–right here in the modern Bay Area.
Winter Issue 2007
Standing the Tests of Time
Walk patiently along a few ocean beaches in the Bay Area, and you just might find objects of stunning beauty that also provide clues to a lost world, fossil sand dollars that are as much as 2 million years old. These fossils, not shells but skeletons called tests, show up only near Daly City and Point Reyes, so it’s a privilege to find intact specimens that have survived the rigors of the coast for many centuries.
Winter Issue 2004
Where the Elk and the Antelope Played
A million years ago, in a climate much like ours today, the land around an ancestral bay teemed with large animals: mammoths and saber-tooth cats; bears, horses, and peccaries. By 300 years ago, the mammoths were gone, but grizzlies, elk, condor, and pronghorn were abundant.European settlers wiped out many of those animals, but programs to reintroduce some of them are now under way. Which raises the question: What should a healthy, native megafauna look like now?
