The Swiss Rock Hammer

There is something little perverse about doing field paleontology with a set of binoculars while sipping Starbucks coffee. It is however an easy paycheck. That is how my week has pretty much been. I've been on construction sites, watching huge machinery move around relatively new (100,000 yrs or younger) alluvium and finding absolutely nothing. On Monday and Tuesday I was in Irvine and was allowed to get relatively close to the equipment as they made a very shallow excavation. Wednesday to Friday however, I was not permitted within 50 feet of where the equipment was cutting a very deep hole in the ground. The latter case wasn't because of any particular resistance by the earth moving crew, but because the ground is contaminated with diesel from when a chevron research facility used to be on the property. As useless as I was made to feel by looking for fossils through binoculars from the top of the pit, I was comforted by the fact that there is a Starbucks across the street and that I'll likely be elsewhere when they start excavating what is lovingly being referred to as "the arsenic hole."