Why are there so many Fossils in Florida?

When is the best time of year to Fossil Hunt?

Where can I find Fossils?

What equipment will I need to Fossil Hunt?

Will I see an alligator while I Fossil Hunt?

Can I keep ANYTHING I find?

There are many fossils, not just in Florida, but throughout the low country of the Southeastern U.S.  To understand why, you need to know a little ancient history.

With each Ice Age, the Earth cooled and polar ice formed.  These rising ice continents pulled water from the oceans and lowered sea levels.  This exposed new dry land around the world, including most of the state of Florida.  What had once been a warm, shallow sea, home to abundant aquatic life, gradually became a swampy home for reptiles.  As the land continued to emerge from the water, it was inhabited by prehistoric mammals, escaping the cold of the north.  It is believed that many Ice Ages have come and gone, leaving behind a vast and varied treasure of fossils.

Many ask, "Do you find dinosaur fossils?"  Actually, dinosaurs lived prior to the Ice Ages, when Florida was still under water.  So if dinosaur fossils are found, they would likely be aquatic dinosaurs.  Unfortunately, the vastly changing landscape of Florida, the warm water and high temperatures make finding 100 million year old dinosaur fossils unlikely.

The fossils we find are conservatively estimated to be between 2 and 20 million years old.  While they include many species that still exist today, they also include extinct species, such as giant sharks, giant land tortoise, mammoth and mastodon, saber-tooth cat, giant ground sloth, North American rhinoceros, camel and many others.  No one really KNOWS how old these fossils are.  In a laboratory you can fossilize something in a matter of hours.  Natural conditions could take hundreds, thousand or perhaps millions of years.  Also complicating age identification is the fact that river-found fossils have been washed from "who knows what level" and mixed with other fossils.

If you are old enough to have lived when these extinct animals were alive, feel free to step forward and speak authoritatively.  If not, you'll have to wade through the often-contradictory scientific information and decide for yourself.  Also, your religious beliefs about the origin of the world may impact your opinion.