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Treasure Trove Of Fossils From Ice Age Unearthed In L.A. Subway

By Kamal Nayan | Update Date: Mar 17, 2014 10:36 AM EDT

Workers at extension project for LA Metro's Purple Line have uncovered a treasure trove of fossils that are believed to be as old as Ice age. The collection has been found near the vicinity of the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art and the La Brea Tar Pits.

The discovery opens up a new prospect for looking at California's prehistoric past. 

"Here on the Miracle Mile is where the best record of life from the last great ice age in the world is found," said Cogstone Resource Management Inc. laboratory director Kim Scott, according to LA Times

"Adorable little sand dollars. Geoducks -- it's a cool water clam, which tells us the water is cold such as you'd see in northern California, Oregon, Washington, Puget Sound, actually. Clams and snails. We've also got Monterey Cypress cones, which tells us the climate here was much like what you'd see in Carmel and the Monterey Peninsula, today."

The fossils found in the subway include sea lions, sand dollars and mollusks. 

The digging work started on the subway extension project in April last year and in the duration workers have found variety of fossils from different time periods. 

"At the La Brea tar pits, all their fossils range from about 10,000 to 45,000 years old," Scott added in the SCPR. "The stuff we're finding here, we have found the older stuff which ranges from about 50,000 to 300,000 years old."

"These are all going to get cleaned up to the point of preservation and identified. And then they're going to be transferred to the Natural History Museum of LA County. When and if we find La Brea-style deposits, that will go across the street to Rancho La Brea."

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