Accidental Paleontology in L.A.

In the fall of 2009, bulldozers digging in preparation for construction of a new power station in arid San Timoteo Canyon southeast of Los Angeles unearthed some fossilized snails. Obscure provisions in California’s tough environmental laws require that scientists be dispatched to construction sites in geologically promising areas, so utility company Southern California Edison had a team of paleontologists standing by. As the researchers sifted through the soil, the magnitude of the find slowly became clear: The canyon revealed a trove of thousands of animal and plant fossils that were more than 1.4 million years old.