Mammoth Find Gives Glimpse Of Primal Past Mastodon Skeleton Called The ‘Brass Ring’

As bulldozers and earthmovers roared in the background, paleontologists at the construction site of a mammoth reservoir Wednesday were gingerly unearthing what they say might be the most complete mastodon skeleton ever found in Southern California.

The fossil was discovered late last month by an earthmover slashing through clay in a valley just south of the small Riverside County town of Hemet, where water officials hope to create Southern California’s largest reservoir. Fortunately, a team of paleontologists was on hand and recognized the bone.

Not only is the discovery scientifically valuable for the new information it could give about the Southern California climate and wildlife of eons ago, it puts the town of Hemet on the paleontological map.

“This is great PR for us,” said Quintin Lake, a paleontologist with the San Bernardino County Museum who was working on the skeleton Wednesday. “We’re not just finding small bits and pieces, but now we can prove that we can find the showy stuff. It’s not just people back east or in South Dakota.”

“This,” Lake added, “is the brass ring.”

The huge skeleton is the second-largest found in Southern California. The largest such skeleton was also found at the site, called the Eastside Reservoir Project, in October 1995. But that skeleton is only about 10 percent intact.

The new find, announced Wednesday, is at least 40 percent intact, and only about half unearthed. The beast’s bottom remains buried in clay, so scientists hope the specimen will be even more complete.

“Little Stevie,” as the fossil has been dubbed, is one of about 3,000 fossils found in the valley being excavated to create the Eastside Reservoir.

The San Bernardino County Museum team watching the excavation and collecting the fossils says it is a region that can be compared to - and possibly exceeds - the La Brea tarpits in Los Angeles for paleontological richness.

“Little Stevie” may be the strongest piece of evidence collected at the Eastside Reservoir Project that the record of prehistoric life preserved in the La Brea tarpits - the record relied upon in Southern California for dozens of years - was an anomaly, said Eric Scott, field supervisor of the paleontological team.

La Brea, he noted, was an unusual area that preserved skeletons of mostly predators who fed upon animals that were trapped in the pits. In Hemet, Scott said, is a fuller cross-section.

When the project began in 1993, a paleontologist hired by the Metropolitan Water District predicted that there would be virtually no fossils underneath the omengoni valley where the reservoir would be dug. But once the digging began, the San Bernardino County paleontologists began racking up fossil after fossil, locating dozens of species that had never been found in inland California.

Among them were so many mastodon fragments that the area was dubbed “Valley of the Mastodons.” But intact mastodon fossils were elusive.

The fossils are enabling scientists to slowly piece together a picture of prehistoric life in Southern California’s Inland Empire and how large mammals may have migrated across North America. In October of 1995, they found “Max,” the largest mastodon found in California, measuring 10 feet tall at its shoulder. That was a larger elephant than paleontologists had expected.

California mastodons were believed to be significantly smaller than their East Coast and Midwestern cousins. But since no whole skeleton had been found, scientists were still searching for answers.