May 6, 2016

By Damon Arthur

Over the next 12 months a team of paleontologists will be tramping through the hills around Lake Shasta looking for 220-million-year-old fossils.

Neil Kelley, who is leading the expedition, said he hopes to pick up where a team of scientists left off more than 100 years ago when they hauled numerous fossils from the area.

"It's unique because the species of animals we find there have not been found anywhere else in the world," said Kelley, a professor of paleontology at Vanderbilt University.

The fossils are types of ichthyosaurs, ancient marine reptiles that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Among the fossils found around the lake are the Shastasaurus and Californosaurus, which Kelley said are found nowhere else in the world.

Matt Doyle, general manager of Lake Shasta Caverns, said the area is at the center of a convergence zone of three different regions.

The limestone rocks, known as Hosselkuss limestone, were once much farther west, out in the ocean. Over millions of years they were pushed up by plate tectonics to their current location on the western edge of the Klamath Mountains.

While volcanic activity and plate tectonics transformed much of Southern Oregon and California, the area around Lake Shasta has been preserved.

Cascade volcanoes covered areas to the north and east of the limestone rocks. And to the south and west, formation of the Sierra Nevada mountains so badly heated and pressed the rocks that fossils were destroyed.

"That area is very geologically and biologically very unique," Kelley said.

Over the past few years, biologists have discovered several new plant species found only around Lake Shasta. Scientists who discovered the plants said the species have survived in the area for millions of years because of the unique geology of the area.

Fossils in the area have been so well preserved that they are just "sticking out," said Richard Hilton, a paleontology instructor at Sierra College in Rocklin.

Hilton, who will be part of the team returning to the area to look for fossils, wrote a book titled "Dinosaurs and other Mesozoic Reptiles of California."

In his book he describes how a team of scientists and amateur paleontologists made numerous trips from 1901 to 1910 searching for fossils in the area around what is now Lake Shasta.

Unfortunately, getting to the area is difficult and recognizing the fossils also takes a trained eye. Hilton, who earned his master's degree from studying fossils around Lake Shasta, said the area is steep, overgrown with brush and poison oak and thick with ticks and snakes.

"It's still very difficult to find these sites today," Hilton said. "It's kind of a nightmare."

Limestone is very hard, so getting the fossils out of the rock without destroying it is also very difficult, he said.

Kelley said the U.S. Forest Service, which owns and manages the land, has designated the Hosselkus limestone hills a special research area. Before his group can excavate for fossils they have to obtain a permit from the Forest Service.

They also have to raise the money to pay for the trip. Kelley and his team are raising money for the trip through a website called Experiment.com. Their proposal is called Rediscovering the Lost Triassic Marine Reptiles of Northern California.

So far, they have raised 82 percent of their $4,400 goal.

Kelley said they hope to do some initial work this fall and then return again in the spring of 2017.

http://www.redding.com/news/local/scientists-planning-to-search-for-triassic-fossils-around-lake-shasta-31e503aa-fe73-5808-e053-010000-378041991.html