Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Bobibam Here. Winding through the South Carolina
Speaker 1: low Country, the Cooper River is a redlined haven for
Speaker 1: sport fish and shorebirds. The waterway originates in Berkeley County's
Speaker 1: Lake Moultrie. From there it proceeds all the way down
Speaker 1: to Charleston, where it merges with two other waterways to
Speaker 1: form the world famous Charleston Harbor. The Cooper River took
Speaker 1: its name from Anthony Ashley Cooper Bayed, seventeenth century English lord.
Speaker 1: As time wore on, it became a lifeline in the
Speaker 1: region's burgeoning rice trade. But the Cooper also bears the
Speaker 1: hallmarks of a far more ancient chapter in South Carolina history.
Speaker 1: If you know where to look, and you've got some
Speaker 1: scuba gear handy, you might just find a mammoth tusk
Speaker 1: lurking beneath the water's surface. Before the article. This episode
Speaker 1: is based on how Stuff Work, spoke by email with
Speaker 1: Matthew Whees. He and his father, Joe Harvey, are experienced
Speaker 1: local divers who patrol a Cooper for fossils, many of
Speaker 1: which end up on display at the Berkeley County Museum
Speaker 1: in monks corner South Carolina, and not all the giants
Speaker 1: they encounter are prehistoric. To hear we'se tell it. Run
Speaker 1: ins with living modern day river beasts aren't uncommon, he said.
Speaker 1: I've had a catfish swallow my hand in a log
Speaker 1: jam underwater, manatee break the surface while I was swimming
Speaker 1: back to the boat, and alligators swim towards me. But once,
Speaker 1: he reports, he came nose to nose with the gator
Speaker 1: and measuring about ten feet or three meters long. Underwater
Speaker 1: fossil hunting is a global pastime outside the US, divers
Speaker 1: have encounted paleo treasures in such places as Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico,
Speaker 1: and the Bahamas. Back in a Bona Fide Lemur Graveyard
Speaker 1: was discovered in the submerged caves of Madagascar. The big
Speaker 1: find was made possible by an international collaborative effort between anthropologists,
Speaker 1: paleontologists and scuba divers. Hundreds of bones appeared in the
Speaker 1: underwater sediments, and some came from contemporary species like the
Speaker 1: invasive black rat. Other remains were left behind by animals
Speaker 1: that when extinct within the past millennia. The site quickly
Speaker 1: established itself as the world's biggest cache of pacu lemur fossils.
Speaker 1: An ancient relative of the rofed lemur, this creature was
Speaker 1: about twice as heavy, weighing an estimated twenty two pounds
Speaker 1: that's ten kilos, but even it would have been utterly
Speaker 1: dwarfed by the guerrilla sized mesopropath Fecus, a gargantuoud lemur
Speaker 1: also represented in these caves. Pygmy hippo, elephant, bird, and
Speaker 1: horned crocodile material was also recovered by the dive team,
Speaker 1: along with the rare, virtually complete skull of yet another
Speaker 1: bigone lemur species. Getting access to the bounty wasn't easy.
Speaker 1: The caves in question were likely dry at some point,
Speaker 1: but today they're part of a flooded sinkhole right now.
Speaker 1: The system's most fossil laden cave runs eighty two ft
Speaker 1: that's twenty five deep. It's a dark environment with a
Speaker 1: complex layout full of horizontal passageways and murky waters. In short,
Speaker 1: this is no place for novice divers, and cave diving
Speaker 1: in general is a high risk sport if you wander.
Speaker 1: Of course, you can't always ascend straight up to the surface.
Speaker 1: And so to avoid getting lost, the scuba specialists on
Speaker 1: that team tracked their pathways with about eight hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty feet that's two hundred and seventy meters of safety lines.
Speaker 1: There's another site in the North Sea. Great Britain was
Speaker 1: connected to the rest of mainland Europe as recently as
Speaker 1: eight thousand, two hundred years ago. For this reason, mammoth
Speaker 1: bones are periodically dredged up out of the North Sea,
Speaker 1: which separates the UK from its continental neighbors. Another precious
Speaker 1: sinkhole is the Page Ladson site in northwestern Florida. Hidden
Speaker 1: below a river, it's yielded some of the oldest known
Speaker 1: human artifacts in North America, along with masted on bones,
Speaker 1: including some fourteen thousand, five hundred and fifty year old
Speaker 1: fossils bearing scars that suggest the animals were butchered by
Speaker 1: ancient people there. Here, tannins are a real nuisance, a
Speaker 1: vital component in leather making a Tannins are chemical compounds
Speaker 1: released by various plants. When these seep into ponds or rivers,
Speaker 1: they can turn the water blackish brown, which can definitely
Speaker 1: impair a diver's visibility. In some corners of the river,
Speaker 1: the tannins help block out sunlight, shrouding everything deeper than
Speaker 1: about ten feet or three meters beneath the surface in
Speaker 1: inky darkness. To see clearly, the divers make good use
Speaker 1: of high wattage underwater lights. Back north, in the Cooper River,
Speaker 1: divers face the same problem. Buieze explained that he and
Speaker 1: his father wear cave lights attached to their helmets. The
Speaker 1: rest of the duo's equipment would look pretty familiar to
Speaker 1: other recreational divers. Since the Cooper gets strong tidal currents,
Speaker 1: the waters speed at any given moment affects their schedule.
Speaker 1: A faster currents make for shorter excursions. So why do
Speaker 1: people go through all this trouble when there are loads
Speaker 1: of fossils hanging out on dry land. Well, for one thing,
Speaker 1: immersion in water has some preservation benefits. Deep in the
Speaker 1: bowels of a sunken cave, bones are less likely to
Speaker 1: be disturbed either by scavengers or the ravages of open
Speaker 1: air climates, And whereas land fossils are often caked in rock,
Speaker 1: some of the bones and flowing rivers get polished clean
Speaker 1: by the currents. Most of the material wee's discovered out
Speaker 1: in the Cooper River comes from two different points in
Speaker 1: geologic time. The river's most sought after fossils are probably
Speaker 1: shark teeth from the Miocene epoch, which lasted from twenty
Speaker 1: three million to five point three million years ago. Some
Speaker 1: of these chompers get quite large. A tooth from the
Speaker 1: extinct Megalodon shark can be over seven and a half
Speaker 1: inches that's nineteen centimeters long. We said sharks teeth are
Speaker 1: the most common fines, though whale earbones come in a
Speaker 1: close second. Other Cooper River fossils were laid down during
Speaker 1: the more recent Pleistocene epoch, and that began just two
Speaker 1: point six million years ago and ended a mere eleven thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred years before the present. Back then, sea levels
Speaker 1: were lower and the Carolina coastline lay farther to the east.
Speaker 1: Over the years, we'se and Harvey have extricated the bones
Speaker 1: of Pleistocene mammoths, cappa bears, hoofed herbivores, and giant beavers,
Speaker 1: which we've done a whole episode on a but to summarize,
Speaker 1: During the Last Ice Age, North American wetlands were occupied
Speaker 1: by casterroides, which were eight foot or two and a
Speaker 1: half meter beavers that likely weighed two hundred and twenty pounds.
Speaker 1: That's a hundred kilos or more. Today's episode is based
Speaker 1: on the article river Bottom Bones The Strange world of
Speaker 1: underwater fossil hunting on how stuffworks dot Com, written by
Speaker 1: Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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