How Can Rivers Actually Protect Fossils?

Some startling fossils are being found in the world's rivers, but it takes dangerous diving teams to extract them. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/underwater-fossil-hunting.htm?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=feed

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Bobibam Here. Winding through the South Carolina
low Country, the Cooper River is a redlined haven for
sport fish and shorebirds. The waterway originates in Berkeley County's
Lake Moultrie. From there it proceeds all the way down
to Charleston, where it merges with two other waterways to

(00:24):
form the world famous Charleston Harbor. The Cooper River took
its name from Anthony Ashley Cooper Bayed, seventeenth century English lord.
As time wore on, it became a lifeline in the
region's burgeoning rice trade. But the Cooper also bears the
hallmarks of a far more ancient chapter in South Carolina history.

(00:44):
If you know where to look, and you've got some
scuba gear handy, you might just find a mammoth tusk
lurking beneath the water's surface. Before the article. This episode
is based on how Stuff Work, spoke by email with
Matthew Whees. He and his father, Joe Harvey, are experienced
local divers who patrol a Cooper for fossils, many of
which end up on display at the Berkeley County Museum

(01:06):
in monks corner South Carolina, and not all the giants
they encounter are prehistoric. To hear we'se tell it. Run
ins with living modern day river beasts aren't uncommon, he said.
I've had a catfish swallow my hand in a log
jam underwater, manatee break the surface while I was swimming
back to the boat, and alligators swim towards me. But once,

(01:28):
he reports, he came nose to nose with the gator
and measuring about ten feet or three meters long. Underwater
fossil hunting is a global pastime outside the US, divers
have encounted paleo treasures in such places as Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico,
and the Bahamas. Back in a Bona Fide Lemur Graveyard

(01:50):
was discovered in the submerged caves of Madagascar. The big
find was made possible by an international collaborative effort between anthropologists,
paleontologists and scuba divers. Hundreds of bones appeared in the
underwater sediments, and some came from contemporary species like the
invasive black rat. Other remains were left behind by animals

(02:10):
that when extinct within the past millennia. The site quickly
established itself as the world's biggest cache of pacu lemur fossils.
An ancient relative of the rofed lemur, this creature was
about twice as heavy, weighing an estimated twenty two pounds
that's ten kilos, but even it would have been utterly
dwarfed by the guerrilla sized mesopropath Fecus, a gargantuoud lemur

(02:33):
also represented in these caves. Pygmy hippo, elephant, bird, and
horned crocodile material was also recovered by the dive team,
along with the rare, virtually complete skull of yet another
bigone lemur species. Getting access to the bounty wasn't easy.
The caves in question were likely dry at some point,
but today they're part of a flooded sinkhole right now.

(02:57):
The system's most fossil laden cave runs eighty two ft
that's twenty five deep. It's a dark environment with a
complex layout full of horizontal passageways and murky waters. In short,
this is no place for novice divers, and cave diving
in general is a high risk sport if you wander.
Of course, you can't always ascend straight up to the surface.

(03:17):
And so to avoid getting lost, the scuba specialists on
that team tracked their pathways with about eight hundred and
eighty feet that's two hundred and seventy meters of safety lines.
There's another site in the North Sea. Great Britain was
connected to the rest of mainland Europe as recently as
eight thousand, two hundred years ago. For this reason, mammoth

(03:38):
bones are periodically dredged up out of the North Sea,
which separates the UK from its continental neighbors. Another precious
sinkhole is the Page Ladson site in northwestern Florida. Hidden
below a river, it's yielded some of the oldest known
human artifacts in North America, along with masted on bones,
including some fourteen thousand, five hundred and fifty year old

(03:59):
fossils bearing scars that suggest the animals were butchered by
ancient people there. Here, tannins are a real nuisance, a
vital component in leather making a Tannins are chemical compounds
released by various plants. When these seep into ponds or rivers,
they can turn the water blackish brown, which can definitely

(04:19):
impair a diver's visibility. In some corners of the river,
the tannins help block out sunlight, shrouding everything deeper than
about ten feet or three meters beneath the surface in
inky darkness. To see clearly, the divers make good use
of high wattage underwater lights. Back north, in the Cooper River,
divers face the same problem. Buieze explained that he and

(04:42):
his father wear cave lights attached to their helmets. The
rest of the duo's equipment would look pretty familiar to
other recreational divers. Since the Cooper gets strong tidal currents,
the waters speed at any given moment affects their schedule.
A faster currents make for shorter excursions. So why do
people go through all this trouble when there are loads

(05:03):
of fossils hanging out on dry land. Well, for one thing,
immersion in water has some preservation benefits. Deep in the
bowels of a sunken cave, bones are less likely to
be disturbed either by scavengers or the ravages of open
air climates, And whereas land fossils are often caked in rock,
some of the bones and flowing rivers get polished clean

(05:25):
by the currents. Most of the material wee's discovered out
in the Cooper River comes from two different points in
geologic time. The river's most sought after fossils are probably
shark teeth from the Miocene epoch, which lasted from twenty
three million to five point three million years ago. Some
of these chompers get quite large. A tooth from the

(05:45):
extinct Megalodon shark can be over seven and a half
inches that's nineteen centimeters long. We said sharks teeth are
the most common fines, though whale earbones come in a
close second. Other Cooper River fossils were laid down during
the more recent Pleistocene epoch, and that began just two
point six million years ago and ended a mere eleven thousand,

(06:07):
seven hundred years before the present. Back then, sea levels
were lower and the Carolina coastline lay farther to the east.
Over the years, we'se and Harvey have extricated the bones
of Pleistocene mammoths, cappa bears, hoofed herbivores, and giant beavers,
which we've done a whole episode on a but to summarize,
During the Last Ice Age, North American wetlands were occupied

(06:30):
by casterroides, which were eight foot or two and a
half meter beavers that likely weighed two hundred and twenty pounds.
That's a hundred kilos or more. Today's episode is based
on the article river Bottom Bones The Strange world of
underwater fossil hunting on how stuffworks dot Com, written by

(06:51):
Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio
in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio,
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H