Digital subscriptions provided by the City of Gulfport THE GABBER.COM No. 2798
February 2, 2023- February 8, 2023
Digging Up Bones When Gulfport resident Rick Cochrane spotted the enormous tooth, half submerged in the muddy bottom of a remote stream near Florida’s Peace River, he knew exactly what it was. He let out a boisterous cheer, which echoed eerily in the murky waters around him, drawing his diving partner, Henry Sadler, to his side. The two fanned the water around the tooth, revealing a row of miniature ivory mountains set in tea-colored bone: a mastodon tooth. A fabulous find, to be sure, even in a state that boasts some of the country’s richest Pleistocene fossil deposits. But they didn’t know the half of it. As they continued to excavate, they found an entire lower jaw (minus one tooth) and, returning to the spot the next day, both of the animal’s lower tusks. It was the discovery of a lifetime. “We were freaking out!” Cochran remembers. “But then it crossed my mind: How are we going to get it out of here?” Their truck was parked some three miles away. That long, hard walk was just one of the hazards they’ve faced
HOME LOANS
RICK COCHRANE
By Amanda Hagood
Rick Cochrane, Gulfport resident and science teacher at Admiral Farragut Academy, poses in front of the mastodon teeth and tusks he found near the Peace River.
in a long career of fossil hunting. Cochrane and Sadler, who teach lower school science at St. Pete’s Admiral Farragut Academy, started diving together while attending Eckerd College. In the past 10 years, they have faced their share
of dangerous currents, low light conditions, and even unfriendly fauna – “Henry was bitten by an alligator once,” Cochrane recalls – while in pursuit of the earth’s prehistoric treasures. Giant continued on page 7
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