Remains of fossilized camel found

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- A geologist searching for earthquake faults at a construction site found something even more earth-shattering: the 100,000-year-old fossilized remains of a North American camel.

Thursday's discovery by Robert Lemmer yielded four vertebrae -- the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae, the thoracic vertebra and a neck vertebra. On Friday, another neck vertebra was discovered in a 12-foot deep trench dug to search for quake faults in the parking lot of a bowling alley.

Fossilized bones were covered in a plaster solution by two paleontological preparers, Howell Thomas and Doug Goodreau, and transported to a laboratory.

No more remains were found in the area.

"That would indicate it was either the kill of a predator or scavenged by something after it died, and the animal dragged off the other parts leaving the vertebrae behind," Thomas said. "Of course, that's just a guess."