This is a pretty interesting read if you like fossils... 
King of the Fossil Hunters
By John Johnson Times Staff Writer
SHARKTOOTH HILL, Calif. — Bob Ernst, a burly 67-year-old with shoulder-length silver hair, sweeps his arm across the treeless horizon. All of it, he says proudly, is his.
The swath of landscape a dozen miles northeast of Bakersfield doesn't have much to recommend it. There's no water, no shade. The downy patches of spring grass won't survive the first heat wave.
What makes this place special is not what's on it, but what's under it.
This is Ernst's personal fossil farm. The former furniture salesman estimates that, over the last three decades, he's pulled more than a million fossils from this hard, brown earth.
His discoveries are in several museums. Without his contributions, the Buena Vista Museum of Natural History in downtown Bakersfield would not exist, said Ken Gobalet, a professor at Cal State Bakersfield and a member of the museum's board.
"There's just something about knowing you are the first human being to touch that bone," Ernst said, explaining his passion.
"People say, 'Bob, you will be out there till the day you die.' That's probably true," he says.
If it seems unlikely that one man, even one digging virtually every day, as Ernst says he does, could unearth a million bones, others tend to believe him for a simple reason.
Ernst's property is part of a unique formation called the Round Mountain Silt that also includes Sharktooth Hill, which some scientists consider as important as the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles and Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and Montana.
The area is "the biggest assemblage of bones" ever found from the Miocene period, said Larry Barnes, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.
The Miocene Epoch was about 15 million years ago. The last of the dinosaurs had died out more than 50 million years earlier. Mammals were taking over, including mastodons, camels, rhinos and a giant animal with a massive body and a dog's face, called a "bear-dog."
"In some areas, the bones are stacked virtually on top of one another," said Tom Demere, a paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Ernst is a prominent example of the increasing influence that hobbyists are having on the field of paleontology. In recent years, major discoveries have been made by amateurs.
Some of the finds have been offered for sale on Internet websites or at big auction houses. The skull of a diplodocus, a long-necked plant-eating dinosaur that grew to 90 feet in length, was advertised on a website recently for $150,000.
The skeleton of an allosaurus, a powerful dinosaur predator that stood 16 feet tall, was sold to a Japanese collector for $400,000. That skeleton had been illegally dug up on federal land, an example of a growing problem that has prompted efforts to protect fossil beds on public lands.
The National Park Service has reported 721 incidents of fossil theft or vandalism over the last three years, and there's a move afoot in Congress to crack down on commercial fossil hunters.
Ernst presents a different issue. He owns some of the most valuable digging grounds in the region, and he limits who can join him, partly for fear of lawsuits after one visitor contracted valley fever.
Some have criticized him for selling his finds, most notably the skeleton of an ancient sea creature to the Japanese, violating an unwritten law against sending valuable artifacts out of the country. Others praise him for bringing attention to a resource that most in the Central Valley do not even know exists.
Ernst first visited Sharktooth Hill in the late 1960s, when the area was owned by Getty Oil Co.
"People were all over the hill, digging," he said. It was the height of Polynesian-chic, when hip young men didn't feel complete without a shark-tooth necklace. The first day, Ernst found a 5-inch tooth from a megalodon, a giant ancestor of the great white shark.
"That tied the knot," Ernst said.
He bought his first land — 80 acres — nearly 30 years ago. It cost him $18,000. Today, he owns 420 acres of prime fossil-hunting territory.
He won't divulge how he paid for all those parcels, saying only that he sold land elsewhere that he had inherited. Each year, he said, groups of scientists from around the world visit his property.
"They stand in awe," he said.
Today, Ernst allows only supervised groups on his property. Each visitor must sign a waiver and go through special training at the Bakersfield museum.
He spends most of his days dressed in a dusty shirt, a pair of old pants and sheepskin boots. His tools are simple: a 4-pound hammer, a shovel and a sharpened tire iron, which he uses like a spatula.
"It's his life. It's who he is and what he does," said his wife, Mary, 47. "He even dreams about it."
She's right, Ernst admits. In particular, he dreams repeatedly of a desmostylus, a four-tusked relative of the modern elephant that spent its time in the shallows of the river delta that once existed near modern Bakersfield.
In his dreams, Ernst said, "I just stand there and look at him."
To Ernst, the idea of buying his own boneyard and spending his days adding to his fossil tally is not strange at all. The big question, he says, has never been, why am I here? But why were they here?
His interests in such things started early. The son of strict Lutherans, he grew up on a 15,000-acre cattle and wheat ranch south of San Jose. While other children celebrated Christmas vacation, he drove the family tractor. Sometimes he unearthed Indian artifacts. Ernst found himself daydreaming about those crumbling bowls. How did those people live? What did they look like?
"I like to think about what happened out here 15 million years ago," he said on a recent afternoon as he drove his pickup truck to one of his digs. Partly exposed was the fossilized skull of a whale.
The whale lived in a vastly different Southern California. The Miocene Epoch was a warm period in geologic history, so the region was even hotter in summer than it is today. Grasslands were widespread and an inland sea lapped against the small hills that would later push up into the Sierra Nevada.
The river delta was dominated by large mammals. But what would make the place special to scientists millions of years later was its rich sea life. More than 125 species have been found, Barnes said.
Whales and sea lions, 11 different kinds of dolphins and 15 kinds of sharks have been unearthed. Several species were named on the basis of the bones found at Sharktooth Hill. Among his finds, Ernst uncovered a previously unknown type of sea lion, which he said Barnes plans to name after him.
How the creatures came to be there, and in such numbers, has been a matter of conjecture for a century or more, since a railroad surveyor stumbled onto the spot and noticed all the shark teeth. One popular theory is that the animals were trapped and slowly died out when the land around the inland sea heaved upward, isolating it.
Although 500-foot Sharktooth Hill gave its name to the fossil beds, today it is known that the beds extend well beyond the small hill, covering an estimated 110 square miles.
At the site where the whale's skull was found, a visitor picked up a bone lying on the surface. A cow bone, Ernst said, tossing it aside. He recalled a nasty encounter with some paleontologists who mistook another cow bone for a fossil. "They badmouthed me, saying, 'Look what he's throwing away.' "
Ernst said his relationship with professionals in the field has been prickly at times. Barnes, for example, won't comment on Ernst, even though they once worked together closely.
But Barnes' attachment to Sharktooth Hill is as deep, if not deeper, than Ernst's.
Barnes, 58, dragged his father to the fossil beds when he was 8 years old. Today, the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History has 400,000 specimens from Sharktooth Hill. Barnes wrote a field study that helped persuade the government to make the Sharktooth Hill portion of the fossil bed a national natural landmark.
Bill Coleman, a North Carolina fossil hunter who sells megalodon teeth online for as much as $28,000 each, said he understood the resentment that professional paleontologists have for commercial collectors. Some of the hunters "look at it as a means to buy a six-pack of beer," he said.
But most are not like that, Coleman said. Ernst counts himself among the responsible hobbyists. He sells shark teeth, he says, but only to support his research and the Bakersfield museum.
Ernst thinks some scientists may be hostile to him because he keeps most of his discoveries in Kern County these days, instead of sending them to other museums.
At the end of the day, Ernst pulled his truck to a stop near his newest dig. Because the 1- to 3-foot-thick fossil bed lies below the surface, a loader was shearing off the topsoil. It costs $780 a day to operate the earthmover, and the only driver Ernst trusts comes out from Oklahoma for only a week at a time.
"That's why I split with the museum on the teeth," Ernst said.
"Commercialization of fossils is a growing problem, especially of vertebrates," said Demere of the San Diego museum. But he said Ernst is no bone merchant. "He could sell everything he finds, but he doesn't. I think he's a pretty ethical guy."
The biggest problem facing the fossil beds may be the threat of development as nearby Bakersfield undergoes rapid growth.
As with other natural landmarks around the country, much of the land around Sharktooth Hill is privately owned. Most of the Miocene fossil beds in Japan are already covered by structures, and some fear the same thing could happen here.
"If I had the political power," said Gobalet, the Cal State Bakersfield professor, "what I would love to see is this area be set aside. Get rid of cattle-grazing and put a museum on the site."
King of the Fossil Hunters
By John Johnson Times Staff Writer
SHARKTOOTH HILL, Calif. — Bob Ernst, a burly 67-year-old with shoulder-length silver hair, sweeps his arm across the treeless horizon. All of it, he says proudly, is his.
The swath of landscape a dozen miles northeast of Bakersfield doesn't have much to recommend it. There's no water, no shade. The downy patches of spring grass won't survive the first heat wave.
What makes this place special is not what's on it, but what's under it.
This is Ernst's personal fossil farm. The former furniture salesman estimates that, over the last three decades, he's pulled more than a million fossils from this hard, brown earth.
His discoveries are in several museums. Without his contributions, the Buena Vista Museum of Natural History in downtown Bakersfield would not exist, said Ken Gobalet, a professor at Cal State Bakersfield and a member of the museum's board.
"There's just something about knowing you are the first human being to touch that bone," Ernst said, explaining his passion.
"People say, 'Bob, you will be out there till the day you die.' That's probably true," he says.
If it seems unlikely that one man, even one digging virtually every day, as Ernst says he does, could unearth a million bones, others tend to believe him for a simple reason.
Ernst's property is part of a unique formation called the Round Mountain Silt that also includes Sharktooth Hill, which some scientists consider as important as the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles and Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and Montana.
The area is "the biggest assemblage of bones" ever found from the Miocene period, said Larry Barnes, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.
The Miocene Epoch was about 15 million years ago. The last of the dinosaurs had died out more than 50 million years earlier. Mammals were taking over, including mastodons, camels, rhinos and a giant animal with a massive body and a dog's face, called a "bear-dog."
"In some areas, the bones are stacked virtually on top of one another," said Tom Demere, a paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Ernst is a prominent example of the increasing influence that hobbyists are having on the field of paleontology. In recent years, major discoveries have been made by amateurs.
Some of the finds have been offered for sale on Internet websites or at big auction houses. The skull of a diplodocus, a long-necked plant-eating dinosaur that grew to 90 feet in length, was advertised on a website recently for $150,000.
The skeleton of an allosaurus, a powerful dinosaur predator that stood 16 feet tall, was sold to a Japanese collector for $400,000. That skeleton had been illegally dug up on federal land, an example of a growing problem that has prompted efforts to protect fossil beds on public lands.
The National Park Service has reported 721 incidents of fossil theft or vandalism over the last three years, and there's a move afoot in Congress to crack down on commercial fossil hunters.
Ernst presents a different issue. He owns some of the most valuable digging grounds in the region, and he limits who can join him, partly for fear of lawsuits after one visitor contracted valley fever.
Some have criticized him for selling his finds, most notably the skeleton of an ancient sea creature to the Japanese, violating an unwritten law against sending valuable artifacts out of the country. Others praise him for bringing attention to a resource that most in the Central Valley do not even know exists.
Ernst first visited Sharktooth Hill in the late 1960s, when the area was owned by Getty Oil Co.
"People were all over the hill, digging," he said. It was the height of Polynesian-chic, when hip young men didn't feel complete without a shark-tooth necklace. The first day, Ernst found a 5-inch tooth from a megalodon, a giant ancestor of the great white shark.
"That tied the knot," Ernst said.
He bought his first land — 80 acres — nearly 30 years ago. It cost him $18,000. Today, he owns 420 acres of prime fossil-hunting territory.
He won't divulge how he paid for all those parcels, saying only that he sold land elsewhere that he had inherited. Each year, he said, groups of scientists from around the world visit his property.
"They stand in awe," he said.
Today, Ernst allows only supervised groups on his property. Each visitor must sign a waiver and go through special training at the Bakersfield museum.
He spends most of his days dressed in a dusty shirt, a pair of old pants and sheepskin boots. His tools are simple: a 4-pound hammer, a shovel and a sharpened tire iron, which he uses like a spatula.
"It's his life. It's who he is and what he does," said his wife, Mary, 47. "He even dreams about it."
She's right, Ernst admits. In particular, he dreams repeatedly of a desmostylus, a four-tusked relative of the modern elephant that spent its time in the shallows of the river delta that once existed near modern Bakersfield.
In his dreams, Ernst said, "I just stand there and look at him."
To Ernst, the idea of buying his own boneyard and spending his days adding to his fossil tally is not strange at all. The big question, he says, has never been, why am I here? But why were they here?
His interests in such things started early. The son of strict Lutherans, he grew up on a 15,000-acre cattle and wheat ranch south of San Jose. While other children celebrated Christmas vacation, he drove the family tractor. Sometimes he unearthed Indian artifacts. Ernst found himself daydreaming about those crumbling bowls. How did those people live? What did they look like?
"I like to think about what happened out here 15 million years ago," he said on a recent afternoon as he drove his pickup truck to one of his digs. Partly exposed was the fossilized skull of a whale.
The whale lived in a vastly different Southern California. The Miocene Epoch was a warm period in geologic history, so the region was even hotter in summer than it is today. Grasslands were widespread and an inland sea lapped against the small hills that would later push up into the Sierra Nevada.
The river delta was dominated by large mammals. But what would make the place special to scientists millions of years later was its rich sea life. More than 125 species have been found, Barnes said.
Whales and sea lions, 11 different kinds of dolphins and 15 kinds of sharks have been unearthed. Several species were named on the basis of the bones found at Sharktooth Hill. Among his finds, Ernst uncovered a previously unknown type of sea lion, which he said Barnes plans to name after him.
How the creatures came to be there, and in such numbers, has been a matter of conjecture for a century or more, since a railroad surveyor stumbled onto the spot and noticed all the shark teeth. One popular theory is that the animals were trapped and slowly died out when the land around the inland sea heaved upward, isolating it.
Although 500-foot Sharktooth Hill gave its name to the fossil beds, today it is known that the beds extend well beyond the small hill, covering an estimated 110 square miles.
At the site where the whale's skull was found, a visitor picked up a bone lying on the surface. A cow bone, Ernst said, tossing it aside. He recalled a nasty encounter with some paleontologists who mistook another cow bone for a fossil. "They badmouthed me, saying, 'Look what he's throwing away.' "
Ernst said his relationship with professionals in the field has been prickly at times. Barnes, for example, won't comment on Ernst, even though they once worked together closely.
But Barnes' attachment to Sharktooth Hill is as deep, if not deeper, than Ernst's.
Barnes, 58, dragged his father to the fossil beds when he was 8 years old. Today, the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History has 400,000 specimens from Sharktooth Hill. Barnes wrote a field study that helped persuade the government to make the Sharktooth Hill portion of the fossil bed a national natural landmark.
Bill Coleman, a North Carolina fossil hunter who sells megalodon teeth online for as much as $28,000 each, said he understood the resentment that professional paleontologists have for commercial collectors. Some of the hunters "look at it as a means to buy a six-pack of beer," he said.
But most are not like that, Coleman said. Ernst counts himself among the responsible hobbyists. He sells shark teeth, he says, but only to support his research and the Bakersfield museum.
Ernst thinks some scientists may be hostile to him because he keeps most of his discoveries in Kern County these days, instead of sending them to other museums.
At the end of the day, Ernst pulled his truck to a stop near his newest dig. Because the 1- to 3-foot-thick fossil bed lies below the surface, a loader was shearing off the topsoil. It costs $780 a day to operate the earthmover, and the only driver Ernst trusts comes out from Oklahoma for only a week at a time.
"That's why I split with the museum on the teeth," Ernst said.
"Commercialization of fossils is a growing problem, especially of vertebrates," said Demere of the San Diego museum. But he said Ernst is no bone merchant. "He could sell everything he finds, but he doesn't. I think he's a pretty ethical guy."
The biggest problem facing the fossil beds may be the threat of development as nearby Bakersfield undergoes rapid growth.
As with other natural landmarks around the country, much of the land around Sharktooth Hill is privately owned. Most of the Miocene fossil beds in Japan are already covered by structures, and some fear the same thing could happen here.
"If I had the political power," said Gobalet, the Cal State Bakersfield professor, "what I would love to see is this area be set aside. Get rid of cattle-grazing and put a museum on the site."
