fogy collectors submerse in the murky Steinhatchee River in Florida walk out unlikely gold in 2022 when they discovered some old knight tooth . They continued their hunting in an expedition likened to “ diving in coffee , ” and were reward with a hoof meat and a tapir skull . “ We bang we had an crucial web site , ” read Robert Sinibaldi in arelease , “ but we did n’t know how important . ”
The part of the river in which Sinibaldi and fellow gatherer Joseph Branin were hunt was once a swallow hole that fill in with sediment . Five hundred thousand years later , it ’s belching up remarkably well - preserved fossils , telling the tales of horses , laziness , tapir , and armadillo that took an inauspicious fall half a million years ago .
Theriveris only now revealing these fossils because its itinerary has move over millenary . Once flowing somewhere else , its waters are now run over and eroding the former pit , effectively rinsing off the fossil . Pretty ready to hand for the terrestrial fossil hunter venturing optimistically – if not a little blindly – into waters that contain so many tannin they look like coffee .
Hundreds of horse fossils have been recovered from the Steinhatchee River site, indicating the area was once an open, grassy area.Image credit: Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace
Sinibaldi and Branin share their finds with the Florida Museum of Natural History , where it was revealed precisely why these fossil finds are so remarkable . They initiate from a period in geological sentence about which we hump very little , with only one other known site in Florida yield such fogy in the past . A rare find for the commonwealth , as well as the balance of the country .
“ The fogy record everywhere , not just in Florida , is miss the musical interval that the situation is from – the middle Irvingtonian North American land mammal age , ” say Rachel Narducci , vertebrate paleontology aggregation handler at the Florida Museum and coauthor of a raw study of the site .
The study cataloged 552 fossils from the situation , now have it off as the Steinhatchee River 2A ( STR 2A ) locality . It found that around 75 percentage of those retrieved belonged to an unidentified species of horse , which tells us the environment was likely clean open rather than being heavily wooded , as otherwise we would ’ve found remains of things likemastodonsand deer .
Giant ground sloths are a regular feature in Florida paleontology, and the Steinhatchee site is no exception.Image credit: Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace
There were also samples of extinct megafauna in the mix . They includedHolmesinaandDasypus , large relatives ofarmadillos , and the ground slothsMegalonyxandParamylodon .
Holmesinais a in particular interesting find from the halfway Irvingtonian as during this sentence they undergo a substantial variety in sizing , blooming from around 68 kilogram ( 150 pounds ) to 215 kilo ( 475 Syrian pound ) . These mid - Irvingtonian sampling give us a look at the intermediate changes that occurred before they grow so drastically in size of it that they became a new species .
“ It ’s basically the same animal , but through prison term it got so much magnanimous and the bones changed enough that researchers published it as a unlike species , ” said Narducci . “ This gave us more clues into the fact that the anatomy kind of trailed behind the sizing increment . So , they got bigger before the shape of their bones convert . ”
Another uncovering of note was a remarkabletapirskull with traits that do n’t seem to summate up . More of its skeleton is require before firm conclusions can be made , but it could be that it ’s a new - to - scientific discipline species , or – as Richard Hulbert , lead author of the newspaper publisher and retired Florida Museum vertebrate palaeontology aggregation manager put it – “ It always could just be that you picked up the oddball individual of the population . ”
The search will continue at the STR 2A neighborhood , albeit it probably quite slowly . dive into chocolate is n’t the easiest room to find fossils , but clearly , it does turn up some good’uns .
The study is publish in the journalFossil Studies .
