| Photographs courtesy a person who goes by the online name of "fossilhunter51." A couple of dedicated paleontology diggers have established residence in one of the "fossil fox holes" in the Middle Miocene Round Mountain Silt Member of the Temblor Formation. Note the surgical masks, worn in deference to Valley Fever fungus spores that infest the uncultivated soils of California's southern San Joaquin Valley. Valley Fever fungus spores are also endemic to California's Mojave Desert, San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita Valley, and Coachella Valley--not to mention central to southern Arizona, southern Nevada, parts of New Mexico, southwestern Utah, and west Texas. |