Prehistoric seal tooth found in Palm Beach
By
Eliot Kleinberg
-
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
PALM BEACH —No one has seen a Caribbean monk seal for six decades, and nobody’s sighted one in Florida in nearly a century.
Now archaeologists say they have found a prehistoric tooth from the extinct animal along the Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach. They say it’s the first evidence ever that the seal lived in what’s now Palm Beach County.
Archaeologists from the Broward County-based Archaeological and Historical Conservancy found the tooth this past month, executive director Robert S. Carr told the Palm Beach Post this past week from Davie.
He said it’s 500 to 1,000 years old.
“We didn’t do carbon dating, but (set its age) just based on the materials around it,” Carr said. He said his group is “99.9 percent sure” it’s from one of the long-gone seals; “the tooth is “very distinctive.”
Carr also said in a news release that the seal’s “occurrence at a prehistoric site in Palm Beach indicates that it was also hunted by prehistoric peoples including the Jeaga. He added that monk seal remains in Florida “are rare, but also have been found (at) Tequesta sites at the mouth of the Miami River and other sites along the Florida coast and the Bahamas.”
Carr said he would not reveal the exact location of the seal tooth discovery to protect the site and as a courtesy to the property owner.
First described by Christopher Columbus in 1494, the docile creature was no match for hunters who treasured its oil, Carr said in his release. He said the last recorded individual in the United States was killed near Key West in 1922. Scientists believe the seals had disappeared from the Caribbean basin by the 1950s; the last confirmed sighting was in 1952 in waters between Jamaica and the Yucatán Peninsula.
A 2014 study of ancient DNA and skulls concluded the Caribbean monk seal belongs to a newly discovered genus, the first new one to be recognized among seal species in 140 years, Carr said. He said the Caribbean monk seal is survived by two living relatives: the Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals. A 2013 article in Scientific American listed those two as among the four most endangered species of seals.
In South Florida, a region that still was wilderness when Thomas Edison was inventing the light bulb, many would be surprised to learn about some of the animals that roamed a millennium ago, said Chris Davenport, Palm Beach County’s archaeologist and believed to be one of only a half dozen county archaeologists in Florida.
Besides the Caribbean monk seal, Davenport said, the “Great Auk” migrated from New England to the Caribbean, spending time in pre-Columbus Florida, until explorers coveting the flightless bird’s meat, eggs and feathers hunted it to extinction in the 1840s.
Carr said the tooth was discovered as part of a large study of changes to Lake Worth, meaning the body of water separating the barrier island of Palm Beach from the mainland.
Originally, it was a closed-in lake — it originally was called Hypoluxo, Seminole for “water all around, can’t get out” — before the area’s earliest settler, Augustus Oswald Lang, dug the Palm Beach Inlet and separated Palm Beach from Singer Island about 1867.
Now the Conservancy, using animal remains from prehistoric sites, is assembling evidence of prehistoric changes to the lake’s salinity through the centuries, Carr said. He said archaeologists suspect periodic storms cut channels into what then was a solid barrier island and allowed seepage, making the lake more salty.
Retrieved from: http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/local/prehistoric-seal-tooth-found-palm-beach/ed9oJDmRN4jSE4lpLOmlpI/
PALM BEACH —No one has seen a Caribbean monk seal for six decades, and nobody’s sighted one in Florida in nearly a century.
Now archaeologists say they have found a prehistoric tooth from the extinct animal along the Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach. They say it’s the first evidence ever that the seal lived in what’s now Palm Beach County.
 |
| Caribbean Monk Seal tooth found in Palm Beach |
Archaeologists from the Broward County-based Archaeological and Historical Conservancy found the tooth this past month, executive director Robert S. Carr told the Palm Beach Post this past week from Davie.
He said it’s 500 to 1,000 years old.
“We didn’t do carbon dating, but (set its age) just based on the materials around it,” Carr said. He said his group is “99.9 percent sure” it’s from one of the long-gone seals; “the tooth is “very distinctive.”
Carr also said in a news release that the seal’s “occurrence at a prehistoric site in Palm Beach indicates that it was also hunted by prehistoric peoples including the Jeaga. He added that monk seal remains in Florida “are rare, but also have been found (at) Tequesta sites at the mouth of the Miami River and other sites along the Florida coast and the Bahamas.”
Carr said he would not reveal the exact location of the seal tooth discovery to protect the site and as a courtesy to the property owner.
First described by Christopher Columbus in 1494, the docile creature was no match for hunters who treasured its oil, Carr said in his release. He said the last recorded individual in the United States was killed near Key West in 1922. Scientists believe the seals had disappeared from the Caribbean basin by the 1950s; the last confirmed sighting was in 1952 in waters between Jamaica and the Yucatán Peninsula.
 |
| The Caribbean Monk Seal, Neomonachus tropicalis |
A 2014 study of ancient DNA and skulls concluded the Caribbean monk seal belongs to a newly discovered genus, the first new one to be recognized among seal species in 140 years, Carr said. He said the Caribbean monk seal is survived by two living relatives: the Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals. A 2013 article in Scientific American listed those two as among the four most endangered species of seals.
In South Florida, a region that still was wilderness when Thomas Edison was inventing the light bulb, many would be surprised to learn about some of the animals that roamed a millennium ago, said Chris Davenport, Palm Beach County’s archaeologist and believed to be one of only a half dozen county archaeologists in Florida.
Besides the Caribbean monk seal, Davenport said, the “Great Auk” migrated from New England to the Caribbean, spending time in pre-Columbus Florida, until explorers coveting the flightless bird’s meat, eggs and feathers hunted it to extinction in the 1840s.
Carr said the tooth was discovered as part of a large study of changes to Lake Worth, meaning the body of water separating the barrier island of Palm Beach from the mainland.
Originally, it was a closed-in lake — it originally was called Hypoluxo, Seminole for “water all around, can’t get out” — before the area’s earliest settler, Augustus Oswald Lang, dug the Palm Beach Inlet and separated Palm Beach from Singer Island about 1867.
Now the Conservancy, using animal remains from prehistoric sites, is assembling evidence of prehistoric changes to the lake’s salinity through the centuries, Carr said. He said archaeologists suspect periodic storms cut channels into what then was a solid barrier island and allowed seepage, making the lake more salty.
Retrieved from: http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/local/prehistoric-seal-tooth-found-palm-beach/ed9oJDmRN4jSE4lpLOmlpI/
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