Salvage Excavation of an Extraordinary Pliocene Fossil Deposit in Florida

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Salvage Excavation of an Extraordinary Pliocene Fossil Deposit in FloridaPI Jonathan Bloch, Co-PI Richard HulbertUniversity of FloridaEAR-0639307ABSTRACTA karst sinkhole deposit west of Gainesville, Florida has recently been discovered that, on the first day of exploration, produced three rare sloth skeletons and one tapir skeleton. Since then about 70 mammalian skeletons and a similar number of skeletons of lower vertebrates have been added. The site is Pliocene age and is in an active limestone quarry, which will be quarried out by the middle of 2008. The PIs have already recovered the first known skeletons of a number of late Pliocene taxa including the oldest skeletons of Castor (a beaver), Erethizon (the North American porcupine), and Holmesina (a large, armadillo-like mammal). Although Florida has many vertebrate fossil localities, none have produced close to the number of complete skeletons of individuals present at this sight. The site is also sampling a more forested habitat than normally preserved, and the potential for finding well-preserved individuals of new or poorly known species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals is very great. At PIs current pace, only about 15% of the total preserved fauna can be expected to be recovered. Therefore, SGER emergency funding is requested to allow them to significantly increase that percentage to 50% or more, greatly increasing both the chances of finding skeletons of rare taxa and increasing the sample sizes of the common taxa.