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Home>Har vard>Quarries
Florida had several sites that Harvard had been working for some years, among them Lakeland and Thomas Farm. There were only 2 slides of Lakeland, which appeared to have been a short-term site that summer. The “Thomas Farm”, a well-known Miocene quarry, was visited this summer. 3 months the same crew -Arnie, Dad, Dr. Romer, Ruth Romer and Nelda Wright- that worked Nova Scotia the previous summer worked here with the addition of Dr. Patterson. The overburden was removed by a scraper pulled by a tractor.
At some point that summer attention ws turned to Wakullah Springs. It is an clear water spring that wells up from the limestone below. The attraction, in additon to the draw of being able to SCUBA dive, was the fact that there were fossils lying on the bottom in some locations. So dad and Arnie took lessons and went to the Spring. Arnie, however, changed his mind about going deep. Not dad. He went in diving down to 90 feet, and ended up in serious trouble. He experienced “nitrogen narcosis” where he became mentally disoriented and lost his sense of reality. He said he wanted to play with the fishes and give them his mask. The experienced diving instructor either observed the symptoms or dad communicated his state of mind, so he had to ascend.
But before he got in trouble, dad was able to collect a gorgeous mammoth tooth. There were about a dozen slides, some of which are really dark but I’ll put them in a slide show because they reflect something about the experience.
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