Undersea fossils dating back 9 million years found under San Pedro High School

A partial remodel of San Pedro High School turned up something remarkable: one of the most stunning fossil beds archeologists have discovered, bosting once-underwater fossils from species dating back as far as 9 million years.

Scientists from the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum unveiled the findings on Monday morning, Sept. 9, at the school, saying much of it was preserved through random chance when the campus was built in 1936.

Also excavated were massive shell beds dating back about 100,000 years.

“Big discoveries like this are really few and far between,” said Austin Henry, assistant curator at the museum, adding it could wind up being one of the largest collections of its kind from a single site in the state.

The discovery, said Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho “no doubt will make the books.”

The process of collecting items is still underway in some other areas on campus. Two boulders with embedded fossils from the site can be viewed in the Discovery Garden at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro. Some of the findings are also in a glass case in the school’s newly constructed main building.

But most of the collection will continue to undergo analysis at the county museum.

It was “an exceptional find,” said Wayne Bischoff, director of Cultural Resources for Envicom Corporation, which was hired to be on site as work began to build the new campus square, where most of the findings were located beginning in 2022.

Henry was quickly called in to oversee and analyze the discoveries, which included dense fossil bone beds, shell layers, teeth from megalodon sharks and bones from baleen whales, extinct dolphins, saber-toothed salmon, sea turtles, and shore birds, along with many fish species.

There was even some fossilized shark and prehistoric dolphin poop “balls.”

That, scientists said, will allow them to investigate what now-extinct dolphins ate 9 million years ago.

LAUSD officials, in a news release, said the findings offer the most “precise map yet” of Southern California’s marine life from long-ago eras.

At one time, Henry said, the entire Peninsula and most of the Los Angeles area was underwater.

The peninsula rose out of the sea but still contains the buried vestiges of marine life that once thrived there. Sometimes they can turn up and surface in surprising places. A seal skeleton, Henry said, was once found in a backyard.

What is believed to be a 12 million-year-old sperm whale fossil was collected from the campus of Chadwick School on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 2014. It was taken to the county Natural History Museum.

So while it’s not the first discovery of its kind in the Harbor Area, it appears to be the most remarkable for its size — estimated to include millions of bones.

Scientists can learn a number of things from findings like these, including more about the life forms, landscapes and climates of ages long past.

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These discoveries, Henry said, possibly support the theory that small, now-extinct islands once may have dotted the California coast, possibly explaining some volcanic ash findings from throughout the area over the years.

As for how it all managed to be preserved, scientists also have a theory about that.

When San Pedro High was originally built nearly 90 years ago, excavation under what was to be the campus square stopped when workers hit a solid bottom — a once underwater terrace. That terrace, scientists now believe, became something of a protective capsule for the fossils that gathered in a slope underneath when workers left it undisturbed.

Among those on Monday’s panel was San Pedro High student and Natural History Museum intern Milan Esfahan. The best part of the work, he said, is being hands on in the field, where discoveries are first revealed.

The museum, Henry said, offers programs where children of all ages can get their hands in the dirt and learn more about what archeologists do.

For excavation information ongoing throughout the area, go to fossilmap.nhmlac.org and click on the Harbor Area on the map. For more details on the area’s underwater past, go to nhm.org/la-underwater.