August 24
Scientists estimate there were at least five Ice Ages, -- the last one ending 12,000 years ago -- with glacial ice extending as far as Virginia.
Mammoths in South Florida managed to survive that last Ice Age -- but only for 2,000 more years.
Last month, archaeologist Willard Steele discovered the remains of a mammoth where workers had dug into the ground while cleaning a canal. Within days, they found nearly 100 more mammoth bones.
The largest finds are two of the mammoth's teeth -- one still intact and weighing almost eight pounds. The other is in two-pound fragments. The bones are more than 10,000 years old.
Richard C. Hulbert, vertebrate paleontologist, said that a combination of climate and human migration into the area resulted in the extinction of creatures such as the mammoth, saber-toothed cat, giant dire wolf, giant bison, and giant ground sloth.
In Florida, it's common to find the fossilized teeth of the 50-foot-long, Carcharodon megalodon -- which was 10 times bigger than the Great White Shark, said Cytacki, whose museum has fossilized teeth on exhibit.
One of the most important discoveries was that of a 9,760-year-old man, woman and child at the Cutler Hammock site in southern Miami-Dade County, in 1985.
Fossils several thousand years old of the dire wolf, horse, and jaguar were also found there.
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