Salvage Excavation of an Extraordinary Pliocene Fossil Deposit in Florida

佛罗里达州一个特殊的上新世化石存款的抢救性挖掘最近在佛罗里达盖恩斯维尔西部发现了一个喀斯特天坑存款，在勘探的第一天，就发现了三个罕见的树懒骨骼和一个貘骨骼。 从那时起，大约有70个哺乳动物骨骼和类似数量的低等脊椎动物骨骼被添加进来。该遗址为上新世，位于一个活跃的石灰石采石场内，将于2008年中期开采完毕。PI已经恢复了一些上新世晚期生物群的第一批已知骨骼，包括最古老的Castor（海狸），Erethizon（北美豪猪）和Holmesina（一种大型，类似犰狳的哺乳动物）的骨骼。 虽然佛罗里达有许多脊椎动物化石地点，但没有一个地方能生产出接近这个景点的完整骨骼。 该地点还取样了一个比通常保护的更多的森林栖息地，发现新的或鲜为人知的鱼类、两栖动物、爬行动物、鸟类和哺乳动物物种的保存完好的个体的潜力非常大。 按照国际保护协会目前的速度，预计只有大约15%的保护动物可以恢复。因此，需要SGER紧急资金，使他们能够将这一比例大幅提高到50%或更高，从而大大增加发现稀有类群骨架的机会，并增加常见类群的样本量。

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.