The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1921-05-05
DIG TEN feet,
FIND PAST ACE
Immense Bones and Petrified
Relics Brought to Light.
SOME FAMClFUL SPECULATION

Lime Deposits Yield Some Of the Most
Important Discoveries Ever Made
: In Southern caIlfornia-Peried May
Have Been 100000 Years Ago and
Scene the Bed Of the oeean--Pelvie
Bones Of the Most Gigantic Animal
That Ever Walked.
They went back 100000 years in
digging down ten feet on the property
Of the Torrance Lime and Fertilizer
company, just outside Torrance, Cal.
DR.. G. L. Edwards, head Of the ma
ture study department Of the Los An.
geles schools; L. q. Sandos, chemical
expert, and s. Maus Purple, general
manager Of the company, spent the
morning examining and appraising
tEs various bone, shell and rock spec
linens as they came up in the course
Of q series Of excavations which prom
Use to be among the most important
made In Southern California.
Although undertaken solely for COM
mercial purposes and with view to
putting on the market the 100000
tons Of the highly valuable decom.
posed marine shell lime on the tract
owned by the company, the excava-
tons have produced marine remains
covering period Of from 100000 to
100000 years before this era and
have also yielded portion of an i'm
mense pelvic bone believed I'd have
been part Of the most gigantic animal
that ever walked the earth.
Drama Of 100000 Years.
In those ten feet Of lime deposits
is packed the recurring drama Of L.
100000 years. There was the bed Of
the ocean as attested by innumerable
shell and fish deposits. There in the
course Of tens Of thousands Of years
great sharks battled, falling locked in
the death embrace to the bottom of
the sea. There, after, the waters had
vanished and vegetation had sprung
up, were large trees, portions Of the
forest remaining petrified amid other
relics older by hundreds Of thousands
Of years.
There, in tens Of thousands of
years, the imperial elephant, standing
over fourteen feet in height and prob
ably weighing three tons, went down
to his watering place, failed on one
bright day or one dark night to watch
his step and begged one foot in
lime pit, struck out in anger with an
'ther foot and his trunk, got those
taught also and passed out of life in
o geology.
However, before the elephant had |
'erished in the mire the saber-toothed
igerl pounced upon him, sinking his
Finch teeth into the helpless victim.
selinquishing his grip when satiated,
le dropped contentedly toward what
e thought would be solid ground,
My to sink into the same pit with
he elephant and to join that immense
reature and the sharks and the in
Intestinal shell forms in furnishing
tory book which would be opened
nth pick and shovel some day any
lumber Of thousands of years later.
TunneIed Foot by Foot.
And the great wolf, too, prowled
nd fed there, and persisted there
lso. as his bones. along with those Of
he rest, testify. Then, almost yes
erday it seems, in contrast with the
ar-reaching records in the pits, a
and desperate man came
lere seeking water and some roots.
With only crude tools-perhaps 1t
as less than 5000 years ago or 1t
'ay have been shortly before the
)ming Of the white man to this con-
nent-he hit upon the frantic idea of
gging back to the source Of q little
ream. And SO he tunneled in, pain
ii foot by painful foot, using clum-
7, heavy shale scraper, not unlike a
rye arrowhead in shape.
They found traces Of him, too, re-
,ntly, few bones mingled with
lose of the shark, the tiger and the
of, his heavy spade little ahead of
IN.
Out Of the depths Of the same
,ring toward which he was striving
e excavating party drank cool.
'acing water in abundance. The
'ck that had bafied him still acted
J a cistern, but 1t had been tapped
It'll modern tools for modern men.