Vertebrate Fossil From The El Paso Mountains

Kern County, California

Vertebrate fossil spotted several years ago in exposures of the late Miocene Dove Spring Formation that at that date occurred well outside the boundaries of Red Rock Canyon State Park on Public Lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management; today, the bone-bearing exposures where this specimen had weathered out on the surface now lie within the rather recently expanded borders of Red Rock Canyon State Park, California.

A camel calcaneus (in humans, the heel bone; but in camels and other ungulates, such as deer and horses, this same bone is called the hock; ungulates walk on their toes with the heel well off the ground) from the Late Miocene Dove Spring Formation of the Ricardo Group, El Paso Mountains, Kern County, California; in actual size, the specimen is 19 centimenters long (roughly seven and one-half inches). Identified by Dr. Pat Holroyd at the University California Museum of Paleontology. Additional information supplied by Dr. Robert Emry, National Museum Of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

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