Future museum is Cal State Fullerton's goal.

The mysterious spheres look like stone bowling balls, and they are part of Cal State Fullerton’s extensive collection of archaeological artifacts. “I don’t know what they are, but they are aesthetically beautiful,” says Susan Parman, professor and chair of the anthropology department. “I am eager to figure out what they were used for.”

Unearthed from the region’s soil since the 1970s when Orange County’s building boom began, the university’s archeological collection is a small part of the much larger accumulation of archaeological and paleontological artifacts and specimens warehoused by the county government.

This treasure trove of local history (dating back 90 million years for the paleontological materials and 9,000 for the archaeological materials) is the focus of recent discussion between CSUF officials and county leadership to establish a museum to showcase the heritage of Orange County.

Among the items in the paleontology collections are pre-historic marine vertebrate fossils from the Miocene and Pliocene age (about 20 to 4 million years ago when this region was under water), including the enigmatic marine mammal called a desmostylian, a favorite of John Cooper, emeritus professor of geology. “They are extinct, poorly understood and looked something like a small horse, but behaved like a hippo,” says Cooper. “But the desmostylian fossils found in Orange County would add considerably to the body of knowledge of these animals found around the Pacific Rim.” Cooper manages the county’s collection and is a champion, alongside Parman, for a future museum.

The museum will provide students from kindergarten to college with a means to learn about the region’s evolution and offer the community a touchstone to its pre-historic past.

“All archaeologists are turned on by touching the same things people touched thousands of years ago,” says Parman. “By sharing these objects with the community, it may allow them to get out of their modern world and touch the past as well as the future. The things that we create today will one day be someone else’s archaeological past.”