Researchers find two sites with fossils including saber-toothed salmon and megalodon, the huge prehistoric shark

Marine fossils dating back to as early as 8.7m years ago have been uncovered beneath a south Los Angeles high school.

On Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that researchers had discovered two sites on the campus of San Pedro high school under which fossils including those of a saber-toothed salmon and a megalodon, the gigantic prehistoric shark, were buried.

According to the outlet, the two sites where the fossils were found include an 8.7m-year-old bone bed from the Miocene era and a 120,000-year-old shell bed from the Pleistocene era.

The discoveries were made between June 2022 and July 2024, LAist reports.

  • neidu2@feddit.nl
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    26 days ago

    Time to get a coffee, I think. As a metric person it took me too many tries trying to parse “8.7 meters years old”

    • TotalFat@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      They used to measure the Kessel Run in meter-years until the numbers got too big to convey in astromech code.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        I love the convoluted explanation “serious” Star Wars fans have come up with. Like dudes, it was a fuckup. George didn’t know what a parsec was. It’s okay. Star Trek does it all the time too and the same sort of “serious” fans come up with silly explanations for why you can go faster than Warp 10, which is infinitely fast, and turn into a giant salamander. Just roll with it, guys. Stop caring.

        • marketsnodsbury@lemm.ee
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          26 days ago

          I think MST3K had the right idea:

          “If you’re wondering how he eats and breathes
          And other science facts
          Just repeat to yourself “It’s just a show
          I should really just relax”

        • neidu2@feddit.nl
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          26 days ago

          True. I remember some star wars geek on the defensive explaining the parsec screwup as the millennium falcon having a navigational computer capable of calculating a route shorter than any had managed to calculate before.

          I for one really like both star trek and star wars, but I’m able to enjoy them for what they are instead of bending over backwards to defend every minutia of the writing as if it’s some religious text.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            26 days ago

            Same. Just have fun with it. It doesn’t matter. The only reason I care about those things is when I make fun of them on Ten Forward or Star Wars Memes.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            25 days ago

            As far as I’m concerned, it means the Falcon can fly really, really fast.

            Sort of funny that people argue over what ‘parsec’ could mean in Star Wars and now how falcons ended up being around a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

  • merari42@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    So this school was built on an ancient Pleistocene burial ground. I know that trope well enough to know what happened next

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    San Pedro students: “Ugh. We have to go to yet another assembly about fossils.”

    Because there’s no way the school is going to present it in a fashion that most teenagers will care about. Not in the American educational system.