Free Republic

Manatee County utility crews unearthed a piece of history, dating back thousands of years, while digging a trench for a waterline. They found a fossilized claw of a giant ground sloth that was covered in dirt and vines. "They were digging away and found what they thought was an ordinary tool," said Charlie Hunsicker, the director of Manatee County’s Natural Resources Department. SNIP Dating back more than 11,000 years, the fossilized find was determined to be a claw from a Jefferson’s ground sloth, a slightly smaller version of the giants that first inhabited South America. "When South America and North...

A group of students discovered something that's never been found in Santa Cruz County before. A fossil of the Jefferson's Ground Sloth, an animal that paleontologists had no idea was in this area of the state until a few curious kids unearthed it. “They were building a dam, looking for crawdads,” said Bryn Evans, a teacher who was with the students when they found the fossil. “They're just in the mud pulling things out and then one of them comes up and is like, 'This isn't a stick, this is a bone!'” What the Tara Redwood School students discovered was...