Overview
- Crews working on a city infrastructure project in Oceanside uncovered multiple fossilized limb bones, ribs and fragments about 12 feet below the surface during routine excavation.
- Consulting paleontologist Joseph El Adli secured the site and his team spent roughly a week to 10 days manually exposing the bones, encasing them in plaster field jackets and moving them to an off‑site lab in Carlsbad.
- Paleontologists date the material to the Uintan stage of the Eocene, about 40 to 45 million years old, and recovered pieces include specimens reported as more than two feet long.
- Initial on‑site assessment narrows likely candidates to a brontothere (a so‑called “thunder beast”) or an amynodont (a “swamp rhino”) but a definitive ID will require cleaning and study of skull or tooth material.
- The City of Oceanside is withholding the exact location for safety and site protection, the fossils are expected to enter a museum collection, and officials say further finds are possible as work continues.