After nearly a century, the shifting red dunes of California’s Central Coast are giving up their final secrets. For 10 days in November, archaeologists used shovels, horsehair brushes, and gallons of quick-hardening foam to unearth and remove a nearly complete Egyptian sphinx from the sands of Guadalupe, CA.

Rather than the North African limestone that gives the Great Sphinx of Giza its form, however, the Cali sphinx is constructed of plaster.

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