A Los Angeles County search-and-rescue team responded to a call last Friday and ended up pulling the remains of an estimated 16- to 17-million-year-old baleen whale from a resident's backyard.

Encased in a 1,000-pound boulder, the find is one of only about 20 such baleen whale fossils known to exist, Howell Thomas, a paleontologist with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, told the Associated Press.

Gary Johnson, 53, explained in the AP story that he first discovered the fossil when he was a teen, exploring the creek behind his family's home.

At the time, he recalled, he called a local museum to come inspect the find, but officials opted not to include the recent Johnson's discovery in their collection.

Decades later, Johnson called the Natural History Museum after a 12-million-year-old sperm whale fossil was recovered at a nearby school.

Baleen is a filter made of soft tissue that sifts prey, like krill, from seawater, the AP report explained.

"I thought, maybe my whale is somehow associated," said Johnson, a cartoonist and art director.

Thomas said he very much wanted to add Johnson's discovery to the county museum's collection of baleen whale fossils, but didn't exactly know how he was going to extricate the half-ton boulder from the ravine where it lay in Rancho Palos Verdes, a peninsula about 25 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.

So, enter the L.A. County sheriff's volunteer search-and-rescue unit, which decided not to send a helicopter to hoist the fossil from its earthen bad -- but agreed to procure the remains as a recovery training mission, Mile Leum, the search-and-rescue team's reserve chief said in the AP story.

The emergency response unit often rescues stranded hikers and motorcyclists who careen off the freeway onto steep, rugged terrain.

Using pulleys and a steel trolley, crews pulled the fossil up a steep slope and into a truck bound for the museum.