San Jose - Cenozoic (mammal-age) fossil (mammoth)

An artist's rendition of a mammoth similar to one that was fossilized in Pleistocene sediments in San Jose.

A recent fossil find in the San Francisco Bay region is the remains of a Pleistocene mammoth right in the city of San Jose, discovered in 2005 by a man walking his dog along the Guadalupe River!

Fossils form when the remains of plants and animals, or traces of their lives such as footprints, are buried in sediments and preserved when the sediments are converted to sedimentary rocks. Sometimes the original animal or plant material is preserved, other times only an imprint or mold is preserved, and sometimes the original material is replaced by new material in the same shape as the original. The San Jose mammoth fossil appears to be of the original bones and tusks.

Learn more about fossils at the USGS or by visiting the Paleontology Portal Web site.

Learn more about the San Jose mammoth.