A state is not a point, and California is about twelve hundred kilometres long. This page stands on Redding, in the north — the only Californian anchor tested with much of anything: the state's geographic centre returns nothing, and its capital returns fifty. Redding returns 2,379 fossils, of which 2,376 are recorded as sea creatures and 3 are not. 1,829 of them belong to one age around 100 million years ago. That is the most one-sided evidence anywhere on this site, and the first thing to ask about it is who did the digging.
Five ages in the past of this place, each one a window rather than a day. Each says which witness spoke — and where our evidence cannot answer yet, it says that too.
“Ma” means millions of years ago. The dashed mark means our sources have nothing for that age — which is a finding, not a fault.
Four places in one state, and only one of them speaks
Before this page was written, four points in California were tested with exactly the same question and exactly the same box. This is what came back.
Redding (this page)
2,379
Sacramento, the state capital
50
Bakersfield
0
California's geographic centre
0
Redding won, and it won by so much that the page had to be built there. Of its 2,379 fossils, 2,376 are recorded as sea creatures — the most single-voiced evidence on this site.
It is very tempting to read that as California having been under the sea, and the list above is why this page does not. Those three quiet points are not reporting an empty past. The rock reaching the surface there is the wrong age, or nobody has dug, or what was dug was never written into the database this site reads.
A big number is a fact about a box and about the people who worked in it, before it is a fact about a state. This page is standing on one of those points and it says which one, at the top, every time.
Travel back in time
One row below carries most of this record and the others carry the remainder between them. That is the shape of the digging, not the shape of the past.
250
million years agojump to the evidence250 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 13° north of the equator. Published models disagree by about 4.3° of latitude here — a few hundred kilometres — so it is one model's answer, not a photograph.
200
million years agojump to the evidence200 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 23° north of the equator. Published models agree more closely here, within about 1.9° of latitude, but it is still one model's answer rather than a photograph.
150
million years agojump to the evidence150 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 32° north of the equator. Published models disagree by about 3.7° of latitude here — a few hundred kilometres — so it is one model's answer, not a photograph.
100
million years agojump to the evidence100 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 44° north of the equator. Published models agree more closely here, within about 2.1° of latitude, but it is still one model's answer rather than a photograph.
66
million years agojump to the evidence66 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 47° north of the equator. Published models agree more closely here, within about 0.2° of latitude, but it is still one model's answer rather than a photograph.
What was the water doing?
Five ages, oldest first. Each one has two kinds of witness — the rock of the wider region, and the fossils dug up near the city — and they are kept apart on purpose, because they are answers to different questions.
Each age here is a marker on the timeline, not a single day. The evidence that belongs to it comes with an age range of its own that overlaps the marker — so it can tell you what this stretch of time was like, and never what was happening on one exact date.
Only the fossils speak
Around 250 million years ago
250 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 13° north of the equator. Published models disagree by about 4.3° of latitude here — a few hundred kilometres — so it is one model's answer, not a photograph.
The rock of the region
No rock layer from 250 million years ago survives in the regional record here, so the rock has nothing to say about this age.
The fossils dug up nearby
3 fossils dug up near Redding have an age range covering 250 million years ago: 3 from the sea, 0 from land. The closest of them was found about 24 km away — near the city, never under it.
Our evidence has no witness here
Around 200 million years ago
200 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 23° north of the equator. Published models agree more closely here, within about 1.9° of latitude, but it is still one model's answer rather than a photograph.
An open question
Neither of the evidence sources we use can answer this one: our regional rock record holds no unit for 200 million years ago at this point, and no fossil dug up nearby covers that age either. That is a real gap in the evidence, not a gap in the past — and saying so is more useful than guessing.
Our evidence has no witness here
Around 150 million years ago
150 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 32° north of the equator. Published models disagree by about 3.7° of latitude here — a few hundred kilometres — so it is one model's answer, not a photograph.
An open question
Neither of the evidence sources we use can answer this one: our regional rock record holds no unit for 150 million years ago at this point, and no fossil dug up nearby covers that age either. That is a real gap in the evidence, not a gap in the past — and saying so is more useful than guessing.
The rock of the region says sea
Around 100 million years ago
100 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 44° north of the equator. Published models agree more closely here, within about 2.1° of latitude, but it is still one model's answer rather than a photograph.
The rock of the region
Across the wider region, the rock from 100 million years ago — the Bald Hills Mbr — was laid down in the sea. That is a statement about roughly 7,700 square kilometres of region, centred about 37 km from the city — not about the ground under one street.
The fossils dug up nearby
251 fossils dug up near Redding have an age range covering 100 million years ago: 251 from the sea, 0 from land. The closest of them was found about 10 km away — near the city, never under it.
Our evidence has no witness here
Around 66 million years ago
66 million years ago, the plate model puts this ground about 47° north of the equator. Published models agree more closely here, within about 0.2° of latitude, but it is still one model's answer rather than a photograph.
An open question
Neither of the evidence sources we use can answer this one: our regional rock record holds no unit for 66 million years ago at this point, and no fossil dug up nearby covers that age either. That is a real gap in the evidence, not a gap in the past — and saying so is more useful than guessing.
What was dug up nearby?
These came out of the ground around Redding rather than under it, so the distance to each dig is on its row. Almost every one is a sea creature, which makes the handful that are not worth looking at twice.
Around 66 million years ago
An Anchura falciformis from around this time (its own age range is 72.2–83.6 million years) was dug up about 45 km from here, in the Chico, Tehama County.
A Califadesma tuscanum from around this time (its own age range is 72.2–83.6 million years) was dug up about 45 km from here, in the Chico, Tehama County.
A Perissitys brevirostris from around this time (its own age range is 72.2–83.6 million years) was dug up about 45 km from here, in the Chico, Tehama County.
Around 100 million years ago
A Hemiaster californicus from around this time (its own age range is 89.8–93.9 million years) was dug up about 0.0 km from here, in the Redding, Shasta County.
A Tragodesmoceras averilli from around this time (its own age range is 89.8–93.9 million years) was dug up about 1.0 km from here.
A Confusiscala sulfurea from around this time (its own age range is 89.8–93.9 million years) was dug up about 3.3 km from here, in the Redding (Bellavista), Shasta County.
Around 150 million years ago
A Plicatula variata from around this time (its own age range is 125.77–132.6 million years) was dug up about 21 km from here, in the Budden Canyon (Ogo), Shasta County.
A Nanonavis breweriana from around this time (its own age range is 125.77–132.6 million years) was dug up about 21 km from here, in the Budden Canyon (Ogo), Shasta County.
A Paladmete perforata from around this time (its own age range is 125.77–132.6 million years) was dug up about 21 km from here, in the Budden Canyon (Ogo), Shasta County.
Around 200 million years ago
A Shastasaurus careyi from around this time (its own age range is 205.7–237 million years) was dug up about 19 km from here, in the Hosselkus, Shasta County.
An Oxynautilus acutus from around this time (its own age range is 215.38–227.3 million years) was dug up about 26 km from here, in the Hosselkus.
An Eocomoseris ramosa from around this time (its own age range is 215.38–227.3 million years) was dug up about 32 km from here, in the Hosselkus.
Around 250 million years ago
A Metabelemnites philippii from around this time (its own age range is 227.3–233.6 million years) was dug up about 19 km from here, in the Hosselkus, Shasta County.
A Leconteia californica from around this time (its own age range is 227.3–233.6 million years) was dug up about 19 km from here, in the Hosselkus, Shasta County.
A Metasibirites frechi from around this time (its own age range is 227.3–233.6 million years) was dug up about 19 km from here, in the Hosselkus, Shasta County.
We show these places to the nearest few kilometres rather than pinning them exactly. The scientists who recorded them know the spot far better than that — the full record is one click away in the Paleobiology Database, and it is free for anyone to read. We round them here because a map made for children is not a map for digging things up, not because anything is being hidden.
What changed?
The plate model places this ground at every age on the page and brings it north as the rows come forward. A position tells you where a piece of surface sat, not what was above it.
The rock at the surface today is younger than all of it. The geological map of this exact point returns Cenozoic sedimentary rocks (Cenozoic), Neogene sedimentary (Neogene), Plio-Pleistocene and Pliocene loosely consolidated deposits (Cenozoic).
This page is one box in a very long state, and this site has a second Californian page 313 km south of it with a different record. Neither is California.
Try it yourself
Nearly every animal in this record lived in sea water. The water is still here, still moving round; the part that has changed is where the land is.
This page is about sampling. Four points, one question, and three near-zero answers — a good way in to why the biggest number in a dataset is often a fact about the collectors.
If one town in a country has thousands of fossils and the next has none, what have you actually learned about the country?
How sure are we?
Column facts describe an area of thousands to tens of thousands of km², centred tens of kilometres from the town coordinate. They are claims about a region, never about the rock beneath the town.
Fossil facts are a bounding-box sample around the town, each with its own distance from it; a fossil is never "here". The absence of fossils is not evidence of the absence of life — only of the absence of a recorded, published dig in this box.
Positions are model outputs, not observations. Independent plate models disagree by hundreds of kilometres at these ages, and that spread is the honest size of the uncertainty.
The land/sea question is answered only by the regional rock and the local fossils, separately, and never by the reconstruction — which says where this ground was and cannot say whether it was wet. There is deliberately no single field holding a one-word answer, because answering in one word would require merging a regional claim with a local one (CLAUDE.md rule 5). The nearby fossils are reported as a census of what has been found — which kinds are present, and how many of each — and never counted into a verdict: occurrence records are not statistically equivalent observations, so a plurality of them cannot establish an environment (science review, 2026-08-30).
Fossils are binned to their nearest slice age by age-range midpoint, with boundaries at the inter-slice midpoints 83, 125, 175 and 225 Ma. Those boundaries are an editorial choice, not a published stratigraphic scheme; a reviewer may prefer stage boundaries. Every occurrence keeps its own age range so the choice can be re-examined.
Sources
Macrostrat — the rock of the regionRead from version 2.3.9 of its data service on 2 September 2026.Peters, S.E. et al. Macrostrat: a platform for geological data integration and deep-time research. https://macrostrat.org, accessed on (date)Palaeogeography: Wright, N., Zahirovic, S., Müller, R. D., and Seton, M. Towards community-driven paleogeographic reconstructions: integrating open-access paleogeographic and paleobiology data with plate tectonics. Biogeosciences 10:1529-1541
The Paleobiology Database — the fossils dug up nearbyPBDB publishes no dataset version string; the data-service path (data1.2) and the datainfo access_time bound this claim.Fossil occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database (https://paleobiodb.org), released under CC0 1.0.Palaeo-coordinate cross-check (Paleobiology Database `pgm=gplates`): Wright et. al., 2013; Towards community-driven paleogeographic reconstructions.Palaeo-coordinate cross-check (Paleobiology Database `pgm=scotese`): Scotese, C.R., 2021. An Atlas of Paleogeographic Maps: The Seas Come In and the Seas Go Out, Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences, v. 49, p. 669-718.Palaeo-coordinate cross-check (Paleobiology Database `pgm=seton`): Seton et. al., 2012; Global continental and ocean basin reconstructions since 200 Ma.
The EarthByte plate model — where this ground used to beMULLER2019 version 3.0, run with pyGPlates 1.0.0, licensed CC BY 4.0.GPlates: Müller, R. D., Cannon, J., Qin, X., Watson, R. J., Gurnis, M., Williams, S., Pfaffelmoser, T., Seton, M., Russell, S. H. J., Zahirovic S. (2018). GPlates: Building a virtual Earth through deep time. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 19, 2243-2261. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GC007584Reconstructions computed with the GPlates Web Service (EarthByte Group, The University of Sydney).Plate model: Müller, R. D., Zahirovic, S., Williams, S. E., Cannon, J., Seton, M., Bower, D. J., Tetley, M. G., Heine, C., Le Breton, E., Liu, S., Russell, S. H. J., Yang, T., Leonard, J., and Gurnis, M. (2019), A global plate model including lithospheric deformation along major rifts and orogens since the Triassic. Tectonics, vol. 38, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018TC005462. Licensed CC BY 4.0.Plate model: Zahirovic, S., Eleish, A., Doss, S., Pall, J., Cannon, J., Pistone, M., Tetley, M. G., Young, A., & Fox, P. (2022). Subduction kinematics and carbonate platform interactions. Geoscience Data Journal, 9(2), p.371-383. Licensed CC BY 4.0.Coastline and static-polygon data by the EarthByte Group, licensed CC BY 3.0 Unported.
This record was assembled on from the datasets above. The ancient positions are reconstructions from a published plate model, not observations.
