September 23, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cWe had about 6 feet of rock to dig down by hand to get to the bone itself from what we had found,\u201d El Adli said.<\/p>\n
The bones could belong to one of two animals from 40 to 45 million years ago during a time in San Diego history where it was tropical, more humid, and more of a forest environment during the Eocene Epoch. The San Diego Natural History Museum already preserves fossils from both those animals.<\/p>\n
Dr. Tom Dem\u00e9r\u00e9, the San Diego Natural History Museum Curator of Paleontology, showed NBC 7 those remains, which were also found in the Santiago Formation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a, well, this is a partial lower jaw of a Brontotheriidae,\u201d Dem\u00e9r\u00e9 showed us.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also called a Thunder Beast, which El Adli described looking like a rhino, massive in size with a Y-shaped bony horn on the nose.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a lower jaw, again, broken off an Amynodontidae,\u201d Dem\u00e9r\u00e9 said. \u201cIt has different style teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n
This animal is known as a Swamp Rhino. Its body is more hippo-shaped, and a part of an extinct family of large-bodied herbivores.<\/p>\n
Upon being discovered, the fossils were covered in plaster jackets and sent to a lab where they will be cleaned and eventually reveal what these bones belong to.<\/p>\n
From the bones that El Adli did find, from ribs to limbs to other fragments ranging from 3 inches to a foot, he believes the animal probably lived in a flood plane.<\/p>\n
\u201dTo me this indicates that this animal, 45 million years ago, died, and then was sitting on the surface for a very long time,\u201d El Adli said.<\/p>\n
While these bones date back more than 40 million years, Dem\u00e9r\u00e9 says the oldest fossils in the coastal area in San Diego County are about 140 million years old. He calls it a blink of the eye when you think about the world as 4.6 billion years old.<\/p>\n
“What\u2019s beneath your feet is crazy,\u201d Dem\u00e9r\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s what El Adli and Dem\u00e9r\u00e9 say can tell us so much about the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re protecting our past; we\u2019re protecting our history. If we don\u2019t know, we\u2019re never gonna learn these things are here, we\u2019re never gonna know what San Diego was like 40 million years ago,\u201d El Adli said. “How we got to be who we are now \u2013 it\u2019s all wrapped up in this history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking ahead to the winter, both El Adli and Dem\u00e9r\u00e9 said the potential for heavy rain could mean more fossils uncovered across the area.<\/p>\n
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