Countywide : Board Approves Center to Display Animal Fossils

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for a $591,700 center at Los Coyotes Regional Park to display the fossils of animals that walked the county 10,000 years ago.

Kathie Seib, a landscape architect with the county’s Environmental Management Agency, said the 5,398-square-foot paleontological interpretive center to be built at the park will display fossils found there and serve as a center for coordinating future digs at Los Coyotes.

Seib said the 80-acre park, which opened in August, 1981, and is situated at the Buena Park-Fullerton line, “is a rich fossil site, considered to be in a league with the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles County.”

The bid accepted by the supervisors envisions spending $166,320 in federal funds and $425,380 in county money for the building. Ron Yeo of Corona del Mar, architect of the building, said construction by the low bidder, Neko Corp. of Sherman Oaks, is likely to start in several weeks and the building could be ready late this year.

Yeo said fossils were first discovered at the site during soil excavation for the Santa Ana Freeway about 20 years ago. In subsequent digging by scientists, “there have been numerous things found there that no one ever expected, such as camels (and) horses that are now extinct,” Yeo said.

He said the site showed traces of three periods, one a marine environment, another a marshy site and finally a land with an oak woodland habitat and meandering streams.

It was in the final period, “about 10,000 years ago, that most of the mammals were discovered there,” Yeo said.