Fossils moved to museum

Paleontological dig surrenders secrets of past

By KEVIN LOLLAR, klollar@news-press.com

East of Interstate 75 on State Road 80, scientists and volunteers have uncovered a paleontological treasure trove: Fossilized jaws, claws, hoofs, femurs, tibias, scapulas, vertebrae, teeth, tusks, toe bones, pelvic bones and ribs of mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, horses, llamas, alligators, turtles, tortoises and gars, buried eons ago and unwittingly unearthed by the Florida Department of Transportation. Scientists from the Florida Museum of Natural History packed it all up Wednesday for a trip to Gainesville.

The story starts in 1997 when Lehigh Acres resident Mark Renz, author of "Fossiling in Florida: A Guide for Diggers and Divers," noticed several dirt piles at an FDOT excavation of a retention pond along State Road 80.



Checking out the piles, Renz found some interesting fossilized bone fragments.

"I climbed into the pit, which was like wet concrete, bellied down and started raccooning," Renz said. "I pulled out a 4-foot mammoth femur, then a mammoth vertebra, then a horse tibia. I thought, 'This may be a scientifically significant site.' "

Renz got permission from FDOT to excavate the site, and D&D Machine & Hydraulics of Fort Myers lent him a pump to keep water out of the hole.

With a team of local amateur paleontologists, Renz started digging in December 2002. In four weeks, the diggers pulled out a large number of fossils, including:

• Mammoth or mastodon: seven complete lower jaws, one mammoth skull, 50 vertebrae, three complete tusks, two of which are more than 7 feet long. • Giant ground sloth: two claw cores, two tibias, four teeth. • Horse: one nearly complete lower jaw, 10 partial jaws, more than 20 limb bones, five pelvic bones. • Llama: one nearly complete jaw bone, eight partial jaws, more than 10 limb bones, four scapulas.

"In 10 years of collecting, I have never come across a single site with so much material that was that complete or nearly complete," Renz said. "I think it's extremely significant. Everything is important. It can give us an idea of the environment at the time."

Confident of the site's importance, Renz called Richard Hulbert, collection manager for the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Florida Museum, who brought a team to Lee County in January to continue the excavation.

"It's always significant when we get such large accumulations that we can collect directly from the ground, as opposed to bones dug up from dredging or mining that are all mixed up," Hulbert said. "Sites like this let us be confident that all these animals were living at the same time." Such fossil deposits are occasionally discovered in Southwest Florida, and each one tells scientists something different, said Hulbert, editor of "The Fossil Vertebrates of Florida."

"Some are 300,000 to 400,000 years old, and some are 2 million years old," he said. "If we put them all together, it's like a movie, seeing how these animals change over time."

Hulbert said the animals at the FDOT site probably died more than 300,000 years ago.

"It's important that we haven't found any bison," he said. "Bison migrated to North America 300,000 years ago. So you'd expect bison in a site younger than that."

As more fossils turn up, scientists will be able to date the site more accurately.

But how did so many animals end up dead and fossilized at one place?

"This appears to have been a river channel," Hulbert said. "It could have been a natural occurrence of animals that drowned crossing the river or died close to it and the bones washed into the river."

All fossils from continued work at the site will be sent to the Florida Museum for study and display. Some specimens eventually will be returned for display in Hendry County. Ultimately, Renz sees teaming up with the Florida Museum on the project as a way to bring amateur and professional paleontologists together.

"I don't want amateurs thinking greed — selling fossils on eBay; I want amateurs to help scientists," he said. "I'd like to help bridge the gap in a relationship that's often strained by greed on the one hand and uppitiness on the other."