Bahamian Fossils

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Richard Franz (left), a University of Florida herpetologist, and David Steadman, a UF ornithologist, view a crocodile skull and tortoise shell at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus on Nov. 27, 2007. The first entire fossilized skeletons of a tortoise and a crocodile found anywhere in the West Indies were uncovered in a kind of sinkhole called a blue hole on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas, along with bones of a lizard, snakes, bats and 25 species of birds, as well as abundant fossils of plants, Steadman says. Radiocarbon analyses date the bones at between 1,000 and 4,200 years old, with the youngest fossil being that of a human tibia, he says.

(University of Florida/Ray Carson)
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