Two Florida Divers Discover Mammoth Bones from Ice Age
Courtesy imageHenry Sadler geeks out over the Columbian Mammoth fossil he pulled from the Peace River with help from fellow diver Derek Demeter.
Two Florida’s Peace River fossil hunters recently found a Columbian mammoth leg bone measuring 4 feet long and weighing 50 pounds. It dates back to the Ice Age, meaning it could be tens of thousands of years old.
Derek Demeter and Henry Sadler were diving in the dark-water river when they came across the bone.
“[Henry] came up, and he’s like, ‘Derek, I found something amazing,’ and he’s just freaking out,” Demeter, planetarium director at Seminole State College, tells the Orlando Sentinel. “When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it. I was in denial. It was really neat to see that be discovered.”
Columbian mammoths lived in Florida during the Pleistocene era between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago, at the same time as saber-toothed tigers. On the day of the mammoth bone discovery, Sadler also found part of a saber-toothed tiger tooth.
“There’s only the top third of it, so it’s missing quite a bit,” Sadler, a middle school teacher in St. Petersburg, tells the Orlando Sentinel. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime find, as is the mammoth leg bone. Derek and I seem to be pretty lucky together.”
The two educators often dive for fossils together and have found most of their treasures in the Peace River. Although the dark water isn’t ideal for spotting predators like alligators and water moccasin snakes, the risk is worth it when they make a discovery that helps give context to what inhabited the state long before humans.
“This helps the scientists put together an idea of where these mammoths were traveling, their range and habitat,” Sadler says. “It’s all about painting a picture of the past, getting that window and little bit of insight.”
Along with the mammoth leg bone, the pair has found fossilized megalodon shark teeth, fish teeth, stingray spines, scallop shells, barnacles, pieces of mammoth jaw and vertebra and more.
“When you uncover this fossil and realize there were these giant, elephant-like creatures roaming around what was probably once a grassland in Florida, it gives you a sense of wonder for what it was like back in ancient times,” Demeter says. “It’s kind of like our way of time traveling. It makes your imagination go wild.”
