Metro finds prehistoric camel bones under future Wilshire/La Brea station

Crews at work on the first phase of the Purple Line extension have uncovered more prehistoric fossils dating back to the ice age.

As The Source reports, paleontologists supervising excavation of the future Wilshire/La Brea subway station have identified bones that once belonged to an ancient camel and either a mastodon or mammoth.

Past work on both the Red and Purple Line subway routes has already yielded a trove of artifacts from Los Angeles’s prehistoric past. Most recently, workers stumbled upon a collection of ancient elephant bones, also discovered at the Wilshire/La Brea site.

Even the under-construction Crenshaw/LAX Line, which will run underground through Leimert Park, has proven to be a solid source of geologic relics. Last year, workers found an ancient bison bone beneath the future Martin Luther King Jr. station.

Paleontologists with Cogstone Resource Management have taken the latest fossil’s to the company’s Riverside lab for further analysis, but they’ll eventually be donated to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

• Bones belonging to ancient camel and mammoth or mastodon — found during work on Purple Line Extension [The Source]
• Metro unearths ancient elephant fossils below Wilshire Boulevard [Curbed LA]
• Peer Into the Purple Line's Fossil-Filled Exploratory Shaft [Curbed LA]
• Metro Digs Up Ancient Bison Bone Below Leimert Park [Curbed LA]