In Florida, archaeologists are investigating a site that a century ago sparked a scientific controversy. Today, it’s just a strip of land near an airport.
But in 1915, it was a spot that became world-famous because of the work of Elias Sellards, Florida’s state geologist. Sellards led a scientific excavation of the site, where workers digging a drainage canal found fossilized animal bones and then, human remains.
Andy Hemmings of Mercyhurst University is the lead archaeologist on a project that has picked up where Sellards left off a century ago.
“Quite literally, where we’re standing, they found what they, at the time, dubbed ‘skeleton two’ and ‘skeleton three.’ It turns out it’s actually one individual, now known as Vero Man,” Hemmings says.
The human remains were in a layer of soil that also contained bones from animals that lived in Florida during the Ice Age: mastodons, giant sloths and saber-toothed cats.
