From The Headlines

A lot to learn from Ice Age, Emerson speakers say

By Janet Begley

Thursday, March 4, 2010

When most people hear the words ice age, they’re not thinking about Florida.

But according to anthropologist Dr. Barbara Purdy, that’s exactly what they should be thinking when they consider life on the Treasure Coast thousands of years ago.

Purdy, along with colleagues Dr. Richard Hulbert, Dr. Kevin Jones and Dr. Thomas Stafford, were at the Emerson Center Thursday evening, throwing their support behind the excavation of what’s become known as the Vero Man site, one of the oldest fossil sites in North America. The lecture was part of the center’s humanities speaker series and was sponsored by the Florida Humanities Council.

Susan Grandpiere, a member of the Old Vero Ice Age Sites Committee, welcomed the overflowing crowd to the lecture, reminding residents of the need to protect the site from potential development.

“People need to ask city government to make it a priority,” said Grandpiere. “These sites should be excavated before they are lost to progress.”

Purdy began her lecture by explaining how ancient man traveled to sites throughout North America, eventually ending up in Florida.

“When people got to Florida, it was very different than today,” said Purdy. “There was twice the land mass, the rivers did not flow and the lake basin was empty.”

In 1913, the building of a drainage canal unearthed the first of many fossils to be discovered in the Vero Beach area.

“From the first publication in 1916 to March 4, 2010, every textbook in American archaeology still mentions the Old Vero site,” Purdy said.

She prefers to call it the Old Vero site because of uncertainty about the gender of human remains found there during a 1913-1916 dig, which also unearthed artifacts and remains of large extinct ice age animals, including mammoth, mastodon and bison.

Dr. Richard Hulbert, a paleontologist from the Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, said that the development of new technology warrants exploration at the Old Vero Ice Age site.

“We have many new technological ways of dating sites, but what we need are samples that are collected in place,” Hulbert said. “We also want to have a detailed understanding of how different species responded to climate change, and Vero would fit in with research we’re already conducting at the University of Florida.”

Also on the panel were Dr. Kevin Jones, chairman of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Florida, who explained the process of determining a fossil’s authenticity and Dr. Thomas Stafford, a research geochemist from Lafayette, Colo., who discussed the importance of finding human and animal fossils together in one excavation site.

“There is enormous information at the Vero site but we must realize how fragile it is and how quickly it can be lost,” Stafford said.

Alan Nastari of Palm City attended the lecture with friends who share his interest in fossils, and thought the program was worthwhile.

“I’m really glad they’re doing this,” said Nastari. “I’m trying to learn about Florida’s past and how it was formed, and this will help me the next time I’m looking for fossils.”

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