Kent Gibson, an amateur fossil collector, has made discoveries for the past 12 years along the Oregon Coast.
* Amateur collector Kent Gibson in Newport has amassed what is likely the state's largest private fossil collection.
* His finds, including rare specimens, have advanced the scientific understanding of Oregon's ancient marine life.
* Gibson hopes to donate his collection to keep it available for research.
NEWPORT -- Tucked into the foggy forests of the Oregon Coast lies a collection of ancient wonders.
Dozens of dolphin skulls stare out from a shelf. A microwave-sized whale vertebra emerges from a casing of volcanic rock. Rare specimens of Desmostylus, an herbivorous mammal that's been extinct for more than 7 million years, bare their teeth.
Here, thousands of fossils, most of which are between 15 million and 20 million years old, line shelves and tabletops, with a few even perched on an old cat tree.
This trove is the work of one man, Kent Gibson, who started collecting fossils from the beaches around Newport nearly 30 years ago and never stopped. It's likely the largest private collection in Oregon.
"Kent is an excellent Oregonian and deserves respect and admiration for the work he has done to conserve our fossil history," said Edward Davis, the director of the Condon Fossil Collection, Oregon's primary paleontological research collection.
An amateur collector who stumbled into it by chance, Gibson has advanced the understanding of Oregon's ancient marine life and been recognized in the field of paleontology. His sprawling collection, which he hopes to donate one day, is too big to fit in the state repository.
A treasure trove of Oregon's ancient animals
Hundreds of coastal finds reside in a spacious shed a short walk from Gibson's house. Larger fossils, including a whale skull, are scattered on the ground, too heavy to lift. A collection of smaller skulls sits on a shelf.
"This is my pod of dolphins and porpoises," Gibson said with a laugh.
Before expanding to the shed, Gibson initially housed fossils in a small workshop adjoined to his house. It still holds some of his greatest treasures: porpoise vertebrae, a large piece of turtle shell, and a perfectly preserved shark tooth.
At the heart of this display are two skulls: one of an enormous Marlin and another of a juvenile Desmostylus, a now-extinct species. Both are casts of the originals, which now reside in the Smithsonian collection.
Gibson insists that despite his success, he is no expert.
"The only thing I'm an expert in is finding the stuff," he said.
Rise of a fossil collector, with help from his dog
Long before he ever found a fossil, Gibson had an affinity for the ocean. A Newport native, he was a fisherman in Alaska before an injury brought him home. He then worked for the port for decades, eventually becoming harbor master.
But he always had an eye for finding treasure hidden in the landscape. From dredging in California to hunting for malachite in the Nevada desert, he pursued the thrill of the hunt. A hobbyist agate hunter, he frequented Newport beaches to search for the banded stones.
It was one of these agate hunts that changed everything.
In the winter of 1996-'97, he was hunting at Ona Beach with his black lab, Bart. As they were leaving, he threw what he thought was a rock for Bart to retrieve. Bart kept bringing it back, so he decided his dog could keep the new toy and tossed it in the bed of his truck.
"When I got home to unload my bucket, I looked down and it looked like that rock was staring at me," he said.
It turned out to be a porpoise skull, which now resides in the Smithsonian along with a photo of Bart, who Gibson credits with starting his new passion project. Today, he has more fossils than he, or anyone, has been able to count.
"The University of Oregon's been out here three times to start cataloguing my stuff," Gibson said. "They're up to 2,054, and they're not quite half done."
Oregon is a land rich in fossils
Understanding why the Oregon Coast is a fossil hotbed requires a journey back in time.
Oregon's volcanic environment has a lot to do with it, said Davis, who is also an associate professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Oregon.
"Oregon is a place that has always been on the active margin of North America, since before the age of dinosaurs," he said.
For most of the Cenozoic Era, or the Age of Mammals, starting around 66 million years ago, western Oregon was underwater due to high rates of subduction zone activity. Shallow ocean environments formed as a result, Davis explained.
When the volcanoes of the Cascades erupted, fossils became trapped in ash or sediment. Eventually, the rocks of today's Oregon Coast emerged, with specimens perfectly preserved.
Fossils are typically found in two major formations: the Astoria Formation, around 17 million years old, and the slightly older Nye Mudstone Formation, with specimens dating back to about 20 million years.
Davis first met Gibson after giving a talk at a pub, when he was invited outside to look at the fossils Gibson had brought along. Davis didn't have high expectations as he headed out to the truck.
"A lot of times, people who approach me like that are mistaken, and they have rocks that look kind of like fossils," Davis said. "(Gibson) showed me the back of the truck and there was just skull, skull, skull, skull. I was totally amazed."
A connection on the fossil coastline
While Gibson's collection has been growing since the '90s, for many years, he had no one to show it to.
That changed in 2012 when he noticed an advertisement in the local newspaper announcing a talk about fossils in Lincoln City.
"I thought, 'Huh. I'll just load up a dozen skulls in my pickup and go up there and see if they want to look at them," he said.
He encountered the two men giving the talk: artist Ray Troll and paleontologist Kirk Johnson, who were co-authoring a book called "Cruisin' the Fossil Coastline."
Gibson convinced them to look at his fossils, and like Davis, they were awestruck.
The next day, he took the duo fossil hunting, and they came over to photograph his collection. They stayed in touch, and around two months later, Gibson heard from Johnson.
"He said, 'I got a new job,'" Gibson recounted. "And I said, 'What are you doing?' And he said, 'Well, I just got hired as the director of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C."
Gibson went on to donate seven skulls to the Smithsonian and is featured in Johnson and Troll's book. Many of his other finds went to Oregon's collection.
In 2022, Gibson won the Katherine Palmer Award from the Paleontological Research Institution, recognizing a non-professional for excellence in their contributions to the field. Davis submitted the nomination.
Developing an expert eye
Over the years, Gibson's process has become a science.
After a big winter storm, he'll head down to a fossil-rich beach, like Beverly or Moolack. From there, he'll conduct a grid search of an area, walking from the high to low tide line.
"The fossil bone has a certain color that my eye is very well-tuned to," he explained, a process he said took around five years.
If a fossil is too heavy to lift, he'll use a homemade cart, outfitted with rugged tires, to carry it back to his truck. Once a specimen is back at his house, it can then take many hours of work to remove the matrix (surrounding rock) from the fossil.
It's a painstaking operation. Armed with a mask, goggles and an airscribe, a preparation tool that looks like a pen, he delicately picks away, making sure to keep the fossil intact.
In his garage workspace, a massive whale vertebra, still encased in matrix, rests on the table. Gibson said he's already spent around 72 hours working on removing rock from one side, and another 20-30 hours on the other.
There are some things to keep in mind for prospective fossil collectors wanting to follow in Gibson's footsteps.
It's important to first determine the ownership of the area you hope to search in, as rules around collecting vary between private, state and federal land.
On Oregon beaches, collecting for personal use is generally permitted, and anyone can collect "small quantities" of loose fossils on the ground without a permit, according to the Oregon Secretary of State. This is defined as up to 3 gallons per person, per calendar year.
While fossils laying loose on the ground can be collected, "if they're embedded in the bank, it's illegal to dig them out of the bank," Gibson noted, as doing so could risk undercutting someone's home, for instance.
If you're interested in gathering larger quantities of fossils or you find vertebrate fossils, you may need to apply for a permit to collect through Oregon State Parks. It is illegal to sell fossils found in Oregon.
A long lineage of coastal explorers
Gibson isn't the first Oregonian to scour the fossil coast, Davis said.
Doug Emlong was an amateur collector whose work contributed to the discovery of multiple extinct marine mammal species in the 1950s and '60s. Another collector, Guy Pierson, was active in the '80s and '90s.
Then Gibson came along, "and I'd say he's actually got a better eye than either of those folks," Davis said.
Gibson's Desmostylus specimens are one of his important contributions to the field. The species, similar to a sea cow, has no surviving lineage. It's rare enough that any pieces go a long way to understanding its biology, Davis said.
The sheer quantity of Gibson's samples also means they could be used to look at population-level variation.
"In paleontology, we usually only have one or two skulls from a place," Davis said. "It's rare to have that many specimens."
Another collector, Weylin Charland, has also taken up the pastime, he said, ensuring a future generation of fossil hunters combing the Oregon Coast.
The future of Oregon's fossils
While the future of Oregon fossil hunting seems secure, the final resting place of these specimens is less certain.
"Kent really wants the bulk of the collection to stay in Oregon and to be available for research and education to Oregon folks," Davis said.
But as things stand, the state repository has nowhere to house a collection so large.
"We are at the point of exploding out of the space that we have," Davis said.
Spreading awareness of the issue is a priority for Gibson. Davis said paleontology isn't the university's highest priority but they are working to find a solution, hopefully within the next few years.
Paleontology offers more than a glimpse into a bygone era. In a world where the environment is constantly changing, it can also provide insights for the future.
"We can look back at the fossil record and see how the environment has changed over the entire history of life," Davis said. "By tracking those changes and seeing how species have responded ... we can come up with better management practices for our modern ecosystems."
Beyond this practical purpose, there's also the sublime beauty of witnessing ancient beings who would otherwise have been lost to time.
To Gibson, collecting seems to be an act of preservation. He exudes almost a sense of duty.
"I've made it my goal to rescue fossils before they get ground into dust," he said.
Rose Shimberg is an outdoors journalism intern at the Statesman Journal. Reach her at rshimberg@salem.gannett.com