Digging for Dinosaurs*

*Fine, not dinosaurs. But if you live in Florida, you’ve grown up around fossils.

Initial excavations at the Love Site in 1974, in between the okra. (Image by Dr. David Webb, University of Florida)

In 1974, when I was 11, there was big news in Gainesville when a farmer named Ron Love was plowing his okra field and hit a large bone. He dug it up and brought it to the University of Florida’s Museum of Natural History. The amazing find was identified as a 10 million year old rhinoceros…