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The Revealing Rains
"But the highway has opened up to a team of Mexican and American palaeontologists a bonanza of fossils that may prove to be one of the largest finds in recent years Shelton Applegate and William Morris of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County reported to a meeting of the Vertebrate Palaeontological Society of America in Flagstaff, Ariz., last week the discovery of more than 18 fossil sites on the peninsula. The sites dot a 350-mile stretch of rugged coastal and inland terrain from Santa Rosalia to Cabo San Lucas. Applegate told Science News that fossils literally cover the group for square miles in some locations where torrential rains have washed away the soil. At other sites, the team found fossil beds thousands of feet thick." [emphasis added]
Anonymous: "A Fossil Bonanza in the Baja,"
Science News, Vol. 106 (October 19, 1974), p.247
The Tail of the Whale
In 1976, while carrying out mining operations in Lompoc, California, quarrymen uncovered a fossilized baleen whale. It was standing vertical in the rock and measured 80 feet from nose to tail. The rock, which was formed from billions of diatom shells, is said to take millions of years to form. Geologists know that land movement has turned this enormous sea creature from its original horizontal position to the present vertical orientation. This fascinating whale fossil can only be explained by rapid burial. The slow processes of uniformitarianism would have meant that the carcase of this massive creature would have rotted long before it could have been encapsulated.
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