BRADEN RIVER Fisherman discovers fossils from Ice Age in Florida

His finds include a complete woolly mammoth tooth.
ORLANDO SENTINEL
WINTER HAVEN, Fla. -- While looking for a good spot to fish, Robert Furnari discovered more than bass at a stream near a construction site in Florida a couple years ago.
Fossils lying in the mud near the water ultimately led him to a woolly mammoth tooth.
Since then, the Lakeland, Fla., man has discovered a cache of animal remains dating back to the Ice Age -- including the woolly mammoth tooth -- at the stream leading into the Braden River near Bradenton, Fla.
Furnari's finds include equine teeth, American camel teeth, bison teeth, manatee rib bones and the creme de la creme, a complete woolly mammoth tooth.
"I was looking for a place to fish," said Furnari, a satellite technician. "Sometimes I pull over and take a break at the end of the day."
Most of the original find had washed toward the river and was lying on the mud.
'Massive find'
Furnari took the fossils to Pangea Institute, a Winter Haven, Fla., group that focuses on science and paleontology and works with young people -- sixth-graders through college age -- who have trouble learning in traditional school settings. Students are active in fossil digs in Central Florida.
"Finding a complete tooth is not totally rare," said Scott Marlowe, a founder of the institute and its events coordinator, who added that the mammoth tooth was found in four pieces.
"But having the complete tooth is great when we're going to teach kids and explain how things work. For us, it's a massive find."
Furnari found the fossils in an area known as Bone Valley, named for its many fossil finds. Phosphate-mining operations in the Peace River basin, stretching from Lakeland south to Zolfo Springs and into Florida's Hillsborough and Manatee counties, have contributed to a lot of fossil finds since the late 1800s, experts say.