Los Angeles subway fossil discoveries have surged as construction continues, uncovering a "treasure trove" of artifacts from the ice age and beyond, including an intact skull of a young mammoth, a "bucket list" discovery for paleontologist Ashley Leger.
"This treasure trove is coming out of an area where you don't usually get to dig a giant 80-foot-deep pit," Leger told CBS News of the tunnel beneath Beverly Hills in the area of the ancient La Brea Tar Pits.
The dig has uncovered bones of mastodons, horses, a giant sloth, and a nearly complete skull from a juvenile mammoth.
"This is the bucket list you always want to find at some point in your career and then it's one of the first things we found here," Leger told CBS News.
The skull of the 8- to 12-year-old Columbian mammoth was bigger than anything Leger discovered in almost 10 years of work at South Dakota's Mammoth Site, The News Recorder said.
"It’s the one fossil you always want to find in your career," she said, according to the News Recorder.
The dig has gone deeper than the 25 feet where artifacts from the ice age were discovered, down to fossils from hundreds of thousands of years ago, when the area was covered in water. Artifacts from the deeper sections of the tunnel include whale bones and an arm bone from a sea otter, CBS News reported.
"I see the history of Los Angeles ... Hundreds of thousands of years ago, animals like whales were swimming in the ocean that was in that exact same area," Leger told CBS News. "Yes, it's mind blowing to think about, but really exciting."
Since the 1990s, all Los Angeles subway digs have included paleontologists to preserve fossils, Dave Sotero, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority told the News Recorder.
"Fossils are a treasure for the public," he said.
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