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Fossil collectors have discovered a prehistoric graveyard buried in Florida ’s Steinhatchee River .
The site has yielded a singular ingathering of more than 500 fossil dating back roughly half a million years . It was full of exceptionally well - preserved bones from ancient mammals , including cavalry , giant armadillos , sloths and perchance a new coinage of tapir .
Holmesina fossils arranged in a partial reconstruction of the animal’s foot.
Around 500,000 years ago , before the river flowed over the site , a sinkhole opened up in Florida ’s Big Bend neighborhood and became a demise ambuscade for hundred of animals . Sediment fill up the sinkhole over time , entombing their remains in near - pristine condition .
These fossils remained hidden until 2022 , when fogy aggregator Robert Sinibaldi and Joseph Branin stumbled upon them during a routine dive military expedition in the river ’s cloudy weewee . After Branin recognise horse teeth puzzle out of the sediment , the pair expose a hoof core and a tapir skull , signal a potential major discovery .
“ It was n’t just quantity , it was quality , ” Sinibaldisaid in a statementreleased on Feb. 12 by the Florida Museum of Natural History . “ We knew we had an important site , but we did n’t get laid how important . ”
Holmesina fossils arranged in a partial reconstruction of the animal’s foot.
The Florida Museum recognized the significance of the uncovering and dated it to the midsection of the Irvingtonian North American Land Mammal Age ( 1.6 million–250,000 year ago)—an evolutionary transition period with a sparse fossil record .
“ The fogey phonograph recording everywhere , not just in Florida , is lacking the interval that the web site is from,”Rachel Narducci , vertebrate paleontology collections manager at the Florida Museum and coauthor of a study of the site published Nov. 15 in the journalFossil Studies , order in the argument .
Snapshots of evolutionary transitions
One of the key discoveries are fossil from an out giant armadillo - like creature calledHolmesina . Within this genus , scientists knew that there was a modulation from a species that lived two million year ago , the 150 - poundH floridanus , toH. septentrionalis , which reach a whopping 475 pounds — but there was fiddling grounds of how the change in size occur .
“ It ’s essentially the same animal , but through time it got so much big and the finger cymbals shift enough that researchers release it as a dissimilar mintage , ” Narducci said .
The fossils from the Steinhatchee River propose a snapshot of this evolutionary change , as the study revealed ankle and foot bones that match the sizing of the later , largerHolmesinaspecies while retaining features of their small ancestor .
Lower jaw bone of a tapir found at the site, which might represent a new species.
“ This gave us more cue into the fact that the anatomy kind of trailed behind the sizing increase , " Narducci said . " So they flummox bigger before the form of their bones changed . ”
A glimpse at a new species?
One challenging specimen find at the site was the skull of an ancient tapir — a pig - form mammal with a short elephant - like trunk . Puzzlingly , the skull had spate of feature not seen in the fogy phonograph recording before , leading the researchers to consider whether the specimen might belong to a previously unknown mintage .
However , Richard Hulbert , head generator of the survey , cautioned against take a leak that leap just yet . “ We need more of the skeleton in the cupboard to firm cipher out what ’s going on with this tapir , ” he said in the statement . “ It might be a raw species . Or it always could just be that you picked up the oddball individual of the universe . ”
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Around 75 percent of the fossils discovered belong to an early species of caballine horses .
Among the 552 fossils go back , about 75 percentage belong to an early species of caballine horses — the subgroup that includes modern domesticated horse .
Horses tend to populate on large expanses of grassland rather than dull forests such as those that occupy the Big Bend region today . Since horses make up such a large glob of the fossils discovered at Steinhatchee River , the researchers concluded that the site expanse may have once been more capable and grassy .
cavalry teeth were some of the best preserved fogy in the swallow hole . “ For the first meter , we had individuals that were everlasting enough to show us upper teeth , lower tooth and the front incisors of the same individual,”Richard Hulbert , lead writer of the paper , said in the statement . With wear and tear still visible on the teeth , researchers may be able to canvass the horses ’ diet in unprecedented detail .
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