So far, the team have documented 40 separate skeletons, which are all between 6 and 9 million years old. Thirty-one of these were probably from the same species of rorqual whale—the family of giants that includes blues, fins and humpbacks.
There were other animals too, including a penguin, an extinct type of sperm whale, and two seals (one of which is new to science). There was a walrus-whale—a bizarre prehistoric dolphin with a tusked walrus-esque face. There was even an aquatic sloth.
All of these specimens were found in an area of roadcut just 240 metres long and 20 metres wide. Pyenson estimates that there are hundreds of skeletons still buried in nearby areas that the construction teams didn’t touch. “What did they obliterate when they built the first two lanes of highway?” he wonders. “They must have dug up bone after bone.”
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 