COUNTYWIDE : Park Fossils Unearth Past for Visitors

The Interpretive Center at Ralph B. Clark Regional Park takes visitors back to Orange County’s past, where they learn about the animals that once roamed the land or lived in the sea.

The result of the many fossils found at the park site was the creation of the regional park in Buena Park and the museum in 1988 to preserve and display the rare finds.

The park is also the only place in Orange County where children--and adults--can go out and actually search for prehistoric fossils.

“They can look for fossils but not keep them,” said Lisa Babilonia, one of the park’s two paleontologists, who gives tours to the public of the fossil beds.

On a tour Friday, Joshua Long, 11, of Yorba Linda was excited about finding a deep imprint in a rock from a shell.

“It’s neat because you can learn what’s been here,” Joshua said. But he added that he’d rather find “bones.”

Paleontologist Steve Conkling explained that it doesn’t have to be turned to stone to be a fossil.

Fossils, which are any evidence of life more than 10,000 years old, are not just bones, such as teeth or body parts, Conkling said. Footprints, burrows and plants can be fossils too.

Conkling said Orange County has an abundance of fossils that date back 10,000 years to 70 million years.

“About 90% of the ground surface has the potential to contain fossils. It’s an extremely rich area in the terms of the number of fossils out there to be found,” he said.

He said because of the county’s coastline, fossils found also help to preserve the ocean’s story of the past.

The park is also the only place in the county where paleontologists are on staff to perform research, excavations and prepare scientific documentation of fossils, Conkling said.

“Our job is to interpret and preserve the fossil resources,” he said.

The latest additions to the center’s displays include a 27-foot-long whale skeleton that weighs 14,800 pounds, or 7 1/2 tons, that was unearthed in April during road construction in Laguna Niguel.

Conkling said the skeleton, the most complete whale on display in the world and estimated to be 8 million to 9 million years old, was a significant discovery.

“We’ve never found anything like it before. It tells us about the changes that have occurred in whales the last 8 million years,” Conkling said, adding that such finds “fill in the void of what happened.”

Found about two weeks ago in the Lake Forest area, the skeleton of a male sea lion, which looks like a walrus, represents the discovery of an 8-million-year-old new species, Conkling said.

A dinosaur bone, the second ever to be found in Orange County, is also planned to be on display, Babilonia said.

“We’ve sent off castings to dinosaur specialists to pin down and confirm what it is,” she said.

The fossil, estimated to be 65 million to 70 million years old, was found off Santiago Canyon Road. Resembling a drumstick, it is a lower leg bone, possibly from a Hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur, she said.

Conkling said the significance of preserving fossils is twofold: “By looking back and seeing what the diversity was, maybe we can get a perspective of what should be here today and what effect as human beings we’ve had on our environment.”

But just as important, Conkling said, “we are preserving a segment of history every time we recover a fossil.”