Twelve to fifteen million years ago during the time period geologists call the Miocene Epoch most of Kern County was an ocean bay. The waters lapped against rolling hills that were soon to be pushed up to form the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Northeast of Bakersfield, where the modern Kern River leaves the Sierra Nevadas, a river flowed into the bay.

The river carried sediments and the remains of plants and animals into the bay. These materials, along with the plentiful remains of marine organisms, sank to the bottom and much of the organic remains was fossilized. Subsequent geologic events pushed up the sediments, and they then eroded to form the rolling hills that include Sharktooth Hill. Exposed in these hills is the bone bed that formed from those fossil-rich sediments. The Sharktooth Hill bonebed encompasses more than 110 square miles, but most of it is deep underground. Only east of the Bakersfield area is it exposed.

This bed is the most fossil-rich Miocene marine bone bed in the world. And, like the great La Brea discoveries in Los Angeles provide for the Pleistocene, the Sharktooth Hill bonebed offers a surprisingly complete a view of the marine Miocene world as we have here. The bed contains the fossilized remains of all major marine groups of animals. On exhibit are the remains of sharks that ranged in length from 6 inches to over 60 feet! There are displays of ancestral sea lions, seals, several species of whales, birds, turtles, mollusks, and more.

The museums most prized specimen is a nearly complete, articulated skeleton of Allodesmus, a Miocene ancestor of modern sea lions. This fossil is the only one of its kind ever found with its flippers fully intact and articulated. Many land mammals also washed down the river and their remains along with botanical debris were also preserved. Consequently, the museum houses a collection of fossil horse, rhino and other land mammal ancestors as well. Wood, nuts, pinecones, and other seed bodies represent the botanical world.

The museum is the repository of the Bob and Mary Ernst Collection, the largest private collection of Sharktooth Hill Miocene fossils in the World.

Read the article Bone Appetite Filed: June 27, 1998 By ANDY KEHE, Californian staff writer. About Bob Ernst on his 400 acres of land adjacent to Round Mountain Road where he digs daily for fossils from the Miocene Era.

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