Rare whale fossil found Friday at about 9:30 a.m. was oddly, recovered by a 10-member search-and-rescue team typically dispatched for recovery operations. The rare whale fossil was recovered on a rock in Rancho Palos Verdes, 500 square miles along the Angeles Crest Highway.

According to authorities, L.A.'s Natural History Museum needed to ask the help of the L.A. Sheriff's Department Search and Rescue team for in recovering the rare whale fossil as there seemed to be no other way of getting the fossil to the museum.

Comprised entirely of Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department search-and-rescue volunteers, the crew worked most of the day using pulleys and a steel trolley in extracting the rare whale fossil out of a Rancho Palos Verdes hole on a hillside backyard, reports the Associated Press.

According to CBS Local, the crew had to then roll the rare whale fossil up a steep hillside atop a customized cart and onto a waiting truck. Apparently, the team decided to take on the mission and considered it a makeshift training mission.

Howell Thomas, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County said the rare whale fossil is estimated at 16- to 17-million-year-old fossil from a baleen whale. It is one of about 20 baleen fossils known in existence.

Indeed, Montrose Search and Rescue Reserve Chief Mike Leum confirmed that fact about the rare whale fossil and said there are only a handful of such fossils known to exist.

Baleen, of which the rare whale fossil was before, is a filter made of soft tissue that used by the animal to sift out prey from seawater. Baleen whales are also known as whalebone whales, and they are some of the world's largest animals, characterized by their plates which substitutes as their teeth.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Leum said after the rescue, 'This victim was very compliant. Baleen whales don't just grab fish individually - they actually open their mouth and they suck in a lot of small animals.

He added, 'That actually gives them the capacity to grow large because they're eating a large quantity of small animals at one time. They're filter-feeders.' 

Resting at the base of a narrow incline on a hillside behind two homes, the rare whale fossil consisted of fragments of the whale's jaw, skull and baleen. The rare whale fossil weighed approximately 1,000 pounds (454-kilogram) and was inside boulder, reports the LA Times.

Though the location and size of the rare whale fossil was complicated for the excavation efforts, its rarity was reportedly enough for museum officials to team up with the search and rescue team.

53-year-old Gary Johnson first discovered the rare whale fossil when he was 17. According to the AP, he was then exploring the creek behind his family's home when he found the rare whale fossil.

Back then he called another local museum to get the rare whale fossil but was unfortunately passed by the museum's officials for lack of budget. But in January, another whale fossil, this time of a sperm whale, was recovered at a nearby school.

That sperm whale fossil is about 12 million years old and it prompted Johnson to call the Natural History Museum.

The cartoonist and art director said of the rare whale fossil he discovered many years ago, 'I thought, maybe my whale is somehow associated.'

Though the sheriff's department search-and-rescue unit initially declined to send a helicopter for the excavation effort with the rare whale fossil, they did offer to use the recovery mission as a training mission.

Leum said the volunteer crew generally rescues stranded hikers and motorcyclists.

He said, 'We'll always be able to say, 'it's not heavier than a fossil.'"

Rare whale fossil, once recovered, will be going on display at the Natural History Museum, according to CBS Local.