ON REEFS WHERE THE BUFFALOES
ROAMED SCIENTISTS MAY LEARN MORE
ABOUT GLOBAL WARNING
More than 14,000 years ago
enormous bison, camels, and mastodons roamed the rolling Georgia
coastline, which extended 60 miles east of the current Georgia
shoreline. This ancient coastline is now submerged and scientists
with Gray's
Reef National Marine Sanctuary are uncovering remnants of
prehistoric animal life 60 feet below the surface.
These underwater discoveries
of fossils and ancient plant life give clues to the climate of
the past and may provide insight to the effects of future climate
change and global warming.
Sanctuary divers, using only
their hands to brush away sand covering the limestone outcropping,
have uncovered mastodon and bison bones, the tooth of a Pleistocene
horse, and marine worm
burrow cast (radiocarbon date of 18,000 + years old). In other
areas of the reef, divers drilled thin corings in the reef and
recovered pine pollen and alder and grass seeds.
Dr. Erv Garrison, a University
of Georgia marine archeologist, has encouraging words about future
expeditions. He hopes one day to find the tools used by Paleo-Indian
hunters, who followed the animals herds.
According to Gray's Reefs
education coordinator Sarah Mitchell, plant fossils give scientists
important information about ancient shorelines and the rise of
sea levels. Learning more about
the historic patterns of changing sea levels and ancient distribution
of plants and animals will help scientists predict future effects
of ocean rise in our coastal areas.
For more information, call
Reed Bohne or
Alex Score at
(912) 598-2345.
YEAR OF THE OCEAN CALENDAR
OF EVENTS
September 19 - October 9 Coast Weeks
October 13 - 16 APEC Ocean Conference, Honolulu,
HI
October 6 - November 10 Smithsonian Forum — The Ocean:
Earth's Last Frontier
November 16 - 19, 1998 Ocean Community Conference '98
- Annual meeting of the Marine Technology Society (MTS), Baltimore, Maryland
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