LAGUNA BEACH — Mark Garcia and his girlfriend, Yvonne Bellgardt, were looking for sea glass in the rocks near the tide pools north of Main Beach when they came across a more ancient find.

“I looked over and saw these clams,” said Garcia, of Mission Viejo. “Then I realized they were sitting inside rocks in the tide pools. The rocks were filled with lava flows. I figured they have to be pretty old.”

Mark Garcia and his girlfriend, Yvonne Bellgardt of Mission Viejo have been coming to the sands of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach for three years looking for sea glass and found fossils near Main Beach that experts say could be 19 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Mark Garcia found fossils near Main Beach like this clam that experts say could be 19 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

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Paleontologist Hugh Wagner, left, Geologist John Foster of the Cooper Center in Orange County and Mark Garcia, from left, look over the sands of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach for fossils near Main Beach that they say are about 17 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Mark Garcia points to a clam shell next to a snail fossil near Main Beach that experts say could be 19 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Mark Garcia found fossils like these clams near Main Beach in Laguna Beach that experts say could be 19 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)



Geologist John Foster, left, looks at a topographical map with Mark Garcia at Heisler Park in Laguna Beach while talking about fossils near Main Beach that they say are about 17 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Mark Garcia looks at the cliffs near a fossil snail shell at Heisler Park in Laguna Beach that experts say could be 19 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Mark Garcia and his girlfriend, Yvonne Bellgardt of Mission Viejo have been coming to the sands of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach for three years looking for sea glass and found fossils near Main Beach that experts say could be 19 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Mark Garcia and his girlfriend, Yvonne Bellgardt of Mission Viejo have been coming to the sands of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach for three years looking for sea glass and found fossils near Main Beach that experts say could be 19 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Mark Garcia found fossils like these barnacles near Main Beach in Laguna that experts say could be 19 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)



Mark Garcia and his girlfriend, Yvonne Bellgardt of Mission Viejo have been coming to the sands of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach for three years looking for sea glass and found fossils near Main Beach that experts say could be 19 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Geologist John Foster, Mark Garcia and Paleontologist Hugh Wagner, right, of the Cooper Center in Orange County look over the sands of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach for fossils near Main Beach that they say are about 17 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Geologist John Foster, right, and Paleontologist Hugh Wagner talk about fossils in the sands of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach that they say are about 17 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Geologist John Foster of the Cooper Center in Orange County looks over the cliffs of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach for fossils near Main Beach that he thinks are about 17 million years old. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Garcia, 50, a retired police officer and Bellgardt, a photographer, spend most weekends at the beaches in Laguna but that day in November was a first.

Garcia began comparing photos of the fossils to images he found on the internet. His research stirred his curiosity even more, so he contacted several geology professors at Cal State Fullerton.

John Foster, a geological engineering professor, analyzed the photos and told him the fossils appeared to be Miocene-age clams and likely 17 million years old.

“When he told me that, I couldn’t believe it,” Bellgardt said. “It was just amazing.”

On Monday, Jan. 22, Garcia was excited to get actual confirmation about his discovery.

He met Foster and Hugh Wagner, a geologist and paleontologist, at the site beneath Heisler Park. The trio walked along the rocks at sunset and Garcia pointed to his discovery: a cluster of clams, barnacles and snails all within about six feet of rock above the beach near the water’s edge. The site is in Laguna’s Marine Protected Area, a location where items cannot be removed or disturbed.

“This is the Miocene Epoch, a period when the megalodon, an extinct species of a stockier version of a great white, swam in the oceans,” said Wagner, visiting from Goldfield, Nev., as he brushed sand from a clam embedded in rock he classified as the Topanga Formation. “This was the beginning of the whales and primitive sea lions. The megalodons would have been swimming in water above these invertebrates. These clams used to be at the bottom of the ocean. Over time they washed up higher on shore and died.”

A hippo-like creature known as the desmostylian may have been feeding along the shoreline where the clams, snails and barnacles lived, Wagner said.

“This creature would likely have crunched the invertebrates using its cylinder-like tooth from its upper and lower mouth to crush them,” he added. “It would have lived here more than 12 million years ago and would have come over from Asia.”

A desmostylian jawbone was discovered in 1996, near the 241 Toll Road in Mission Viejo.

Wagner examined the fossils and determined that likely some of the clams died quickly because of how tightly the valves were closed. He also established that they were a single community and that many were well-preserved.

He and Foster noted that the rock formation just above where the fossils were found was from a more recent time period and that at some point that rock formation had likely started sliding over where the fossils were located, which explained why the grouping abruptly stopped.

“Geologists will note the location and get a GPS reading and through that get an idea why these fossils are right here and no where else along here,” Foster said. “By putting this on maps, it puts together a history of the area.”

For Garcia, an ocean enthusiast who’s long been on a search for interesting finds, the confirmation by the scientists made his discovery even more special.

“It’s exciting because the average person doesn’t walk across fossils that are 17 million years old,” he said. “To hear how it all began and how it’s exposed now — as a person who loves the ocean, that’s neat to see.”