DIGGING IN THE DIRT; FOSSILS OFFER PEEK AT PAST.

Byline: Romy Jacobson Daily News Staff Writer

Long before coyotes, bobcats and jack rabbits roamed Red Rock Canyon, it was home to three-toed horses, spiral-horned antelopes, elephantlike creatures with four tusks and camels as large as giraffes.

Now a multicolored badlands of wind- and water-carved cliffs, the area 8 million to 12 million years ago had a climate like Mazatlan - the ocean only 40 miles away, where Bakersfield is now - a perfect home for the ancient animals whose bones have surfaced over the past nine decades under the careful tools of paleontologists.

For Dr. David Whistler, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the layers of bare rock are like a textbook, each containing information about the history of the canyon.

Each fossil fragment from a shovel-tusk gomphothere or antilocaprid or bisonis is another piece of the puzzle.

``We're refining the calendar. We have an earth calendar based on the fossils we find,'' Whistler said. ``We have a very complete record of fossils here.''

The canyon is one of the best spots in California to find fossils because of its barren, fault-uplifted, eroded cliffs - the same feature that brought film crews for more than 130 movies, from ``The Mummy'' with Boris Karloff in 1932 and ``Stagecoach'' starring John Wayne in 1936, to ``Jurassic Park'' in 1993.

``You don't have soil covering everything up,'' Whistler said. ``You have to get natural exposure to find fossils. You have to be exposing rocks.''

Fossil remains of more than 80 species of ancient creatures - mostly mammals, no dinosaurs - have been found at Red Rock since paleontological work started in 1906, before the area became a state park.

Whistler first came to Red Rock Canyon with one of his professors at the University of California, Riverside, in 1959.

Whistler has excavated countless fossilized fragments, including a 9-1/2 million-year-old jaw from an ancient horse, toes of an 8 million-year-old camel believed to be 16 feet tall, and an 11 million- to 11-1/2 million-year-old fragment of rhinoceros jaw.

``He's able to unravel this world,'' said state park ranger Mark Faull. ``He's able to take us back in time.''

Whistler walked along a dried-out riverbed one day last month to check on his most recent find - a fragment of what may be a tortoise shoulder blade, embedded in some rocks.

In his 50s, tanned from decades of searching for fossils, Whistler carries a U.S. Army-surplus trenching pick and wore a baseball-style cap and a red bandanna around his neck to ward off the sun.

Walking with Whistler is Faull, a ranger at Red Rock for almost 14 years.

``Dave, look at this,'' Faull said, picking up a small, jagged object from their path.

``Good eye, Mark,'' Whistler replies as he examines the fragmented object, which he believes to be a piece of a small horse pelvis.

Whistler and Faull continue along the sandy area to the rocks where his fossil is still partially buried.

Whistler removes a stone, which he placed on top of his find to protect it, and pours acetone on it in order to preserve and hold it together until he can excavate it.

``Most fossil bones are held together with a lot of glue, more glue than there is bone,'' Whistler jokes. ``Fossils are held together with plastic today.''

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3 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color in AV Edition only) Paleontologist David Whistler cradles a 9-1/2 million-year-old tooth from an elephantlike mammal recovered from the Mojave area.

(2-3--Color in AV Edition only) Above, paleontologist David Whistler, right, accompanies park ranger Mark Faull to a fossil site in Red Rock Canyon State Park. Below, Whistler, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, displays some of the fossils he's uncovered.

Jeff Goldwater/Daily News