giant oyster fossils 2

sketchfab

1,500 feet above sea level and just thirty miles from San Francisco's Bay lies an ancient landscape, with rocks that are approximately six million years old exposed along a road cut. These specimens have been collected before, but there is still plenty to discover. Observe how they are compacted and have lost some of their calcite, leaving them white and brittle near the surface - not fossils, but rather demineralized remains. However, on lower levels, some appear shiny and gray. They display a layered structure, with decades of growth visible in each specimen. One particularly long one measures a meter in length and could have lived for hundreds of years. In the 1840s, Mendenhall uncovered an entire whale skeleton simply sitting on the surface. I plan to map this outcrop and possibly return to collect some specimens based on what's been observed. Working on this slope is no easy task. This photo was taken while driving by, with the side view mirror of the passenger side causing the periodic grayout. Another drive-by-shooting! The mesh in Metasoft used for this image was medium, an improvement over the low resolution of the first version. Now, the challenge is to find the best fossils possible.