| A Google Earth street car perspective (snapped in October, 2011) that I edited and processed through photoshop. The view is practically due east along California State Route 190, headed toward Death Valley National Park, at SR 190's junction with Highway 395 in Olancha, California. Famous venerable landmark cottonwood trees at left. And the northern end of the Coso Range lies dead straight ahead on the skyline. That's where the upper Miocene to upper Pliocene Coso Formation produces several species of 4.8 to 3.0 million year-old mineralized mammal bones in the Coso Range Wilderness, including--meadow mice, rabbits, haenoid dogs, very large grazing horses--one of which was eventually recognized by paleontologists as the world-famous Hagerman Horse (one of the oldest members of the genus Equus, which includes all modern horses and other equids)--peccaries, slender camelids, and a short-jawed mastodon, a vole (famous Cosomys primus, named in honor of its occurrence in the Coso Mountains, a large-headed llama, and a bear. |