The whale skull I (re-)found at Fossil Point, Coos Bay, Oregon in April 2007 on a NARG field trip. NARG performed a Search and Rescue Mission to retrieve the skull in October 2007.
Here is day one of the excavation. NARG members from left to right Dan Olough, Robert Rose, Larry Purchase, me, Kimberly Brown, Steven Bland, and Bill Sullivan with my BoscHammer demolition hammer
The skull lies in the upper part of the Empire Formation sandstone which is roughly 10-6 million years old (late Miocene). Jim Goedert of the U of Washington's Burke Museum thinks the skull represents a new genus and species of whale! We received permission from the landowner Edna (she owns the Empire Cafe at the end of Newmark Ave. in Coos Bay, on your way to Fossil Point & Sunset Bay, check it out for some AWESOME gourmet food & breads!) to excavate the skull, and she is donating it to the University of Oregon's Condon Museum which is the official state repository for important fossil specimens. NARG received a permit form the Army Corps of Engineers which allowed us to dig the skull after Oct. 15th, so on Oct. 16th, guess what? Right, we pulled in with a few dump trucks' worth of equipment and WENT FOR IT! Above we are just beginning the excavation, have a trench started around the skull and Robert is recovering a rib that was near the left occipital lobe.
Robert recovering the rib from under the skull. It is the only bone we found with the skull; the rest were scattered about the area.
Here is the skull with some more matrix removed from the rostrum (beak) and a bigger trench on day two. The pine needles are from the storm that hit that day & continued through Friday :(
Here's the skull after plastering it on day three (actually half the job was done the night before in a raging storm under a canopy)
Here is a vertebra that is probably not from the same whale that we found 50 yards up the beach. It's a nice one and has all the processes intact.
A vertebral disc from the whale, at least we think it is from the same one :)
A rib probably not from our whale
Herte is a scapula bone, probably from our whale. The three pieces were found many feet apart on the beach by Andrew "Eagle Eyes" Bland :)
Robert rescuing a bone from near the skull, it might be a digit from a flipper or...?
Day five, the trackhoe arrives :D We jacked the skull off its pedestal and the gang from McMinnville (they have experience with moving large fossils since they excavated a mastodon on the Yamhill River) lifted it for us so we could shave some more off before they drove it 1/4 mile down the beach to the waiting trailer.
Some of the NARG Search & Rescue Gang poses for a group shot. Andrew Bland, Edna, Jan Hodder (OR Instit. of Marine Biology, Edna's neighbor) Bill Sullivan, me, and my trusty BoscHammer demolition hammer. I don't leave home without it! And no, Bosch did not compensate me for this! HINT!
The group from McMinnville moving the skull down the beach to the trailer
Loading the skull on the trailer. It will go to Andrew Blands's driveway for preparation and eventual delivery to UO in Eugene. We hope someone will want to describe it soon! Could it be you???
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Tim Fisher