This is a much belated trip report from my vacation out West. My friend and I took a vacation to see a concert in California, but unfortunately the band cancelled the tour. We kept our plans in place though, and had a great time. For followers of this blog, you might remember my post from a couple months ago about Planning of the trip.
We started in Los Angeles, drove to Sequoia National Park where we spent 2 nights camping, followed by 2 nights of camping in Yosemite National Park. The camping trip report will follow as a blog post later this week.
Along this drive we stopped at the famous Shark Tooth Hill for fossil collecting. This world-class site boasts one of the best fossil beds in the United States. One can find bone fragments of land and marine mammals, turtles, and of course, shark teeth.
A more detailed overview of collecting this site will be posted in an upcoming book I am working on. Follow along for updates on this project by subscribing via email
Trip Report: Collecting Shark Tooth Hill in Bakersfield, California
The Terrain and Location
Shark Tooth Hill is located in Bakersfield, California, about a 2 hour drive North of Los Angeles. It is not the most exciting drive, and the call time for collecting makes for an early morning if leaving from Los Angeles. I am not sure of any other closer places to stay that would be of interest for a vacationer though. The most exciting part of entering Bakersfield is driving through an active oil field on a very hill-y road. The course is like that of a video game, with sharp turns and unexpected drops. It can be quite fun in a rental car.
Setting up Reservations
The Ernst family has owned and maintained this quarry for generations. They host professional collectors, paleontologists, and many families and casual collectors looking for a fun day outdoors. Fees vary from $40 (surface collecting only) to $70 (surface collecting + ‘premium digging’) for the day. Reservations and available dates are at http://www.sharktoothhillproperty.com/reservations.htm
I opted for the $70 ‘premium’ digging, since I had traveled so far to collect here. I found it to be worth it, though the surface collecting was quite good, discussed later in this post.
We met Rob Ernst at the quarry entrance at 7:30 to meet up with the day’s collecting group (if you go, don’t forget to bring a copy of your signed waiver, it speeds up the departure). The group left together at 8am sharp, and we followed Rob to the top of the hill and the collecting site, about a 5-10 minute drive. There were 2 other groups and a few individuals on this day.
After we reached the top and got out of our cars, Rob led the group on a short tour of the hill and the area we were collecting for the day. There are hundreds of acres of land that yeilds fossils on the property, and we focused on what I believe he called ‘slow curve’ though it looked quite different from what I saw online so I am not sure if that was the exact area.
It was immediately quite clear how rich this fossil bed is in regards to the number of fossils that can be found. Just in the parking lot, there were several teeth and hundreds of bone fragments.
Rob was very knowledgable, and helpful in providing ID’s for our finds for the day. He had a tray of teeth and bone that served somewhat as a dictionary for identifying species.
There were a few areas that were off limits for collecting because there was a significant find uncovered that would require more professional excavation, a juvenile mammoth skull, a large jaw of a baleen whale, as well as a near-complete sea turtle.
The Collecting
As I mentioned, there are 2 ways to collect here, the aforementioned $40 surface collecting, and the opportunity to pay an extra $30 for using the Ernst Quarries’ tools to dig into the previously undisturbed walls. There are additional fees if you wish to bring your own, larger tools, but I found what was provided to be more than sufficient, and thankful I did not have to bring any picks or hammers in my luggage.
They has sifting screens of varying sizes, shovels, hammers, and picks. I would also recommend bringing a handkerchief or even a dust mask. The area is known to hold valley fever, tiny spores that can cause a fungus in people’s and animals lungs. It can be quite serious and even deadly in rare cases. Rob assured me that the area we collected that day was not one that would cause any issues, but I wore a handkerchief that I used over my face while digging.
You can see the tools I used in the left of the photo, and the wall I collected from. It was about 3 feet tall, and I dug about 3 feet in, removing what I’d imagine to be over a hundred pounds of rock and the sandstone-type material of the fossil bed. On average, I found a fossilized bone or shark tooth every 5-10 minutes. It was a good hit rate, but quite different from my previous collecting experience in Florida, where I found 5-10 shark teeth every minute.
Most all of my spoil material went in the pile behind me for the surface collectors. I did not comb through my spoil material too thoroughly, partially because I was inexperienced to this type of collecting, and also I was fishing for bigger sharks, looking for teeth 2”+ of size, which I found a couple. This leaves dozens and dozens of smaller shark teeth and fossils embedded in matrix that came out of a freshly dug excavation. The $40 surface collecting is not a method to be looked over, but I was happy to pay the extra fee to dig.
I collected for about 4 or 5 hours, stopping only occasionally for water breaks on what turned out to be a relatively mild day (it can get quite hot in the summer here). The Mako Shark teeth were a welcome first to my collection.
I was told, and rightfully so, to leave the fossils in the matrix for transport and cleaning back home. Shark Tooth Hill fossils are notoriously fragile. I had a few that I cleaned up too much, and broke in my luggage. Some of them are so brittle they even broke in gentle cleaning.
Above is another Mako Shark Tooth, and below is that of a tiger shark.
A Day’s Worth of Finds
Below is a shot of everything I went home with from my half-day’s worth of collecting. I could have stayed longer and went home with some more significant finds, but we had a long drive ahead, and I was satisfied with this haul.
A close up shot of that 2”+ Mako Shark Tooth.
I arranged the better finds in a Riker Case to rame a memorable trip, and my first West Coast finds.
