The ancient shells found in a construction pit were given to San Diego Natural History Museum, nearby elementary schools
Tom Deméré relishes visiting construction sites with vertical shafts sunk deep into the earth.
“It’s always exciting to be involved in a project that extends straight down. The deeper you go, the farther in time you go back,” said Deméré, the longtime curator of paleontology for the San Diego Natural History Museum.
On March 18, he and fellow paleontologists from the Balboa Park museum were at the Jefferson Makers Quarter construction site in East Village, where thousands of marine fossils up to 2 million years old were discovered about 48 feet below street level. Deméré said the fossilized shells included oysters, clams, snails and barnacles from the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, a time when the East Village area was an estuary.
East Village construction dig uncovers 2-million-year-old marine fossils
Tom Deméré relishes visiting construction sites with vertical shafts sunk deep into the earth.
“It’s always exciting to be involved in a project that extends straight down. The deeper you go, the farther in time you go back,” said Deméré, the longtime curator of paleontology for the San Diego Natural History Museum.
On March 18, he and fellow paleontologists from the Balboa Park museum were at the Jefferson Makers Quarter construction site in East Village, where thousands of marine fossils up to 2 million years old were discovered about 48 feet below street level. Deméré said the fossilized shells included oysters, clams, snails and barnacles from the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, a time when the East Village area was an estuary.
East Village construction dig uncovers 2-million-year-old marine fossils