Ancient DNA could unlock South Florida secret

More than 10,000 years ago, modern humans filtered to South Florida, living side by side with mammoths, mastodons and saber-tooth tigers.

About 14,000 years ago, modern humans roamed to South Florida and lived side by side with mammoths, mastodons and saber-tooth tigers.

That, at least, is what Florida Atlantic University scientists hope to prove by analyzing ancient DNA found at an archaeological dig in Vero Beach.

If they can confirm the age of some very brittle bones, it will fill a major gap in human history, said Greg O'Corry-Crowe, an FAU associate research professor. "It would imply that humans were on this continent much longer than originally thought," he said.

Officially called the Old Vero Man site, the dig is considered one of the most important archaeological finds in North America. A large number of animal and human bones were discovered there, providing a rare glimpse of the Florida landscape at the end of the last Ice Age.

The site was originally discovered in 1915 when a farming company dredging a relief canal spotted part of a human skull and 44 other bones from up to five individuals, male and female.

After inspecting the bones, Dr. E.H. Sellards, the state geologist in the early 1900s, developed a controversial theory: the bones were up to 14,000 years old so therefore humans co-existed with large prehistoric animals. Most experts at the time believed humans arrived in North America 4,000 to 6,000 years ago, long after those animals went extinct.

Mercyhurst University Archaeological Institute, based in Erie, Pa., and which is overseeing the Vero Beach dig, wants to prove Sellards was correct.

It recruited FAU, which operates one of the few ancient DNA laboratories in the nation, to determine the age of the bones. FAU already has pinpointed the age of ancient Beluga whales and other prehistoric mammals in Florida and Alaska.

FAU "is certainly the preeminent facility for doing this kind of work," said James Adovasio, provost of the Mercyhurst Institute and a world-renowned archaeologist.

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Ancient DNA could unlock South Florida secret