Picture of the Day - My Hospital Fossil Find

Last evening on my way home from checking on a home in Templeton, CA, I have recently been watching while the owners are on vacation I decided to stop by the nearby neighborhood in which Templeton's Twin Cities Hospital is located on my way home to Paso Robles, CA. Fellow Santa Lucia Rockhound "Jason" is the master hunter of material from Templeton and he recently showed his finds from a construction zone in the shadow of the hospital and I had since then intended to stop by after work hours and see if anything new had been exposed. The general vicinity of the hospital is locally renowned for having the very best petrified whale bone in California (highly silicified to the point of being gemmy in some cases) as well as possessing the very best biconoids to be found anyway on Earth (the ones in the vicinity of the Highway 46 West summit pale in comparison). Unfortunately, that area has now been mostly built over but a few vacant lots remain and will be most fun to pick through once they get developed during the earth-moving process. Anywho, I knew that "Jason" had already been through the site several times during the course of construction that my odds of finding anything were slim unless new digging had occurred since his last visit. Upon arriving it was immediately obvious that construction was at a pause and had been since last it had rained last month. This meant everything there now Jason had already seen. I decided to go look around anyway and it was clear he and perhaps others had been picking around but I did find this one very nice piece of highly silicified Miocene whale bone.
Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).