All afternoon Pendergraft methodically scrutinizes hill after barren hill. He remembers where the draglines were from his last visit and follows their movement as if on some sort of migration. He climbs deeper and deeper into the landscape.
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Jim Pendergraft's sharp eyes spot a megalodon shark tooth partly buried . He uses a hunting knife to lift it out of the ground. |
By the end of the day, Pendergraft has collected several varieties of extinct sharks teeth, a whale vertebrae, a leg bone and a tooth from a three-toed horse, a broken mammoth tooth, a mastodon tusk, the armor-like remains of a turtle shell, and several mouth plates. The day was about average. Once, on a better than average day in the mines, Pendergraft uncovered the largest Barstovian 14-to-15 million year old fossil deposit ever found in Florida.
Florida was home to roaming extinct mammals such as mastodons, giant ground sloths, pig-like animals called Peccaries, paleo-lamas, camel-like animals, sea mammals called dugongs, similar to today's manatee, and sharks to name only a few species. The bones of Florida's most recent prehistoric history begin to emerge in the modern epoch which is divided into three time periods commonly called the ice age.
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Jim
Pendergraft hold a megalodon shark tooth which measures 6.75
inches. |
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