Dispatch: a city crew 12 feet down in Oceanside, Calif., hits fossil bones up to 45 million years old. Thunder beast or swamp rhino?

Dispatch, we have a large hoofed mammal, deceased for roughly 40 million to 45 million years, recovered from a city work site in Oceanside, California. ABC News reports that crews working on a city infrastructure project, about 40 miles north of San Diego, uncovered the fossils this month. "These significant fossil finds, which included several limb bones, ribs, and numerous other bones and fragments, were uncovered approximately 12 feet below the surface during routine excavation for a city infrastructure project," the city said. Joseph El Adli, a paleontologist who had been monitoring the site, recognized what he was looking at and secured the area. His team then spent seven days freeing the bones from several tons of hardened mudstone and sandstone before encasing them in a plaster field jacket for the trip to an off-site lab. The animal walked the ancient floodplains of Oceanside during the Eocene Epoch, and the remains came out of a layer the city calls "Member C of the Santiago Formation," in northwestern San Diego County. As for who it was, there are two suspects. It could be a Titanotheres, also known as a "thunder beast," or an Amynodon, also known as a "swamp rhino." "Further examination of the bones once they have been fully removed from the rock that encases them should allow paleontologists to narrow down the precise identity," the city said. Officials aren't saying exactly where the dig is, citing public safety and the integrity of the site, and the bones are expected to end up in a museum collection for the public and scientists to study. So a crew went out to do some routine city work and came back with something from before there were cities. I'd call that scope creep. Over.