Overview
- A consulting paleontologist discovered the first fossil fragment on Aug. 31, and crews paused a water‑infrastructure dig while a staged rescue excavation recovered limb bones, ribs, and other fragments.
- Teams encased the bones in plaster during a multi‑day effort and removed very large elements from about 12 feet below the surface for transport to a laboratory in Carlsbad.
- Based on limb proportions and the rock layer, scientists have narrowed the animal to two possibilities — a brontothere (a large, hump‑shouldered herbivore) or an amynodont (a semi‑aquatic rhino relative) — but a definitive ID requires skull or teeth.
- The fossils come from Member C of the Santiago Formation, an Eocene unit known to preserve North American vertebrates, which helped narrow the likely age to roughly 40–45 million years ago.
- Oceanside is withholding the exact site location for safety and preservation, officials say, and the material will undergo preparation and study in the lab before being transferred to a museum for public curation.