I’m waiting inside a trailer-office on a construction site just off Wilshire Boulevard, fiddling with my camera. Los Angeles magazine has sent me to take notes and photos of shoreline fossils discovered here, nine miles from L.A.’s present-day waterfront. Ziploc baggies of dirt cover the little room. They are scattered on the desk, tucked above thick binders lining the bookshelves, in shoeboxes on the floor. The soil differs slightly from sac to sac: grayish and gravely; chocolate-brown and soft; black and shining. Each is marked with the depth at which workers scooped them from the sixty-foot shaft they’re digging outside, destined to become a subway station.