Paleontology Collection

Where Fossils Find a New Life

The Nat’s Paleontology collection is the most important repository for our region’s fossil record, and we return to it every day with new questions and new technologies to discover more about the history of life on Earth. Our fossils reveal a story of dramatic changes in plant and animal diversity, ecosystems, habitats, and climate over the last 140 million years.

Although our fossil specimens have been dead for a long time, our collection is very much alive. Our own staff, and researchers from around the world, make new discoveries from our collection all the time. Our shelves contain undescribed species, uncertain evolutionary relationships, and unclear timelines just waiting to be studied.

And it doesn’t stop there! At 1.5 million fossils and counting, our Paleontology Collection is always expanding as new specimens are brought in by our field crews. The majority of our specimens are unearthed as Southern California’s sedimentary archive is excavated for freeway expansions, residential and commercial development, and infrastructure.

Collection Highlights:

We house california’s richest record of 2-4 million-year-old marine mammals and marine invertebrates. Most of them were found in San Diego, National City, and Chula Vista.
We also have California's richest record of 28 million-year-old fossils of early dogs, rhinos, camels, and oreodonts. These were discovered in Chula Vista and Otay Mesa.
In San Diego, Carlsbad, and Oceanside, we have unearthed California’s richest record of 40- to 50-million-year-old fossils of early bats, rodents, hedgehogs, primates, carnivores, tapirs, brontotheres, and camels.

Our collection contains some of the only dinosaur fossils known in California, from 75-million-year-old sediments in Carlsbad.
We have significant fossils of extinct toothed and baleen whales, giant sea cows, and walruses. (Yes, walruses in San Diego County!)
We house 168 holotype fossil specimens, which are the first (and sometimes the only) specimens known for an entire species. We also have 474 secondary types and 851 hypotypes.

This stout hand bone belonged to a giant anteater from about a million years ago. Today, giant anteaters range from south Brazil to Honduras, but this fossil was discovered just south of our border in western Sonora, Mexico—the only record for North America. It came from rocks very similar in age to those in the Anza-Borrego Badlands.

These 40-45 million-year-old plant fossils are from (left to right) a palm, soapberry, and laurel tree, all found in San Diego County, and all extinct. Plant fossils offer great detail about ancient ecosystems and climates.

Warm water walruses? Yep! This short-tusked species, Valenictus chulavistensis, was described by our Paleontology Curator, Dr. Tom Deméré and lived of San Diego's coast about 3.5 million years ago. The Nat has an extensive collection of fossil walruses, porpoises, dolphins, and baleen whales that illustrate the amazing evolutionary history of marine mammals.

Atop this pin head sits a tiny fossil tooth of a small lemur-like primate, Uintasorex sp., from about 40 million years ago. Micro-fossils give us highly valuable details about the place and time they came from because smaller animals tend to have higher biodiversity, they don't travel as far, and they tend to evolve faster in response to environmental changes.

This fossil skeleton is an Archaeocyon, or ancient dog. These small proto-dogs roamed our region 28 million years ago. They are not the ancestors of modern dogs and wolves, but another branch of the Carnivoran family tree that was pruned by extinction. There are several examples of early—and now extinct—Carnivorans in our region's diverse fossil record.

Access Our Collection

The Nat’s Paleontology Collection is under the care of Kesler Randall, Paleontology Collections Manager, and Tom Deméré, Ph.D., curator of the Paleontology Department and director of PaleoServices.

ONLINE COLLECTIONS DATABASE

Information about individual specimens can be accessed by searching our online collections database, which contains thousands of detailed 3D models like the one seen below.

This skull of an early dog-like predator, Mesocyon coryphaeus, was found in Chula Vista, CA. Thousands of 3D models like this can be explored in our collection database.

Use Policy

The collections may be used by appointment only. Please contact us to arrange a visit to our collections.
Download the Paleontology Collections Access Guidelines (PDF).