Memories of Leisey

This article combines information from Frank Garcia's program to our club on October 17, 2000 with a few of my personal recollections of the dig - submitted by Doug Heym

Frank Garcia had always dreamed about finding fossils and bones. When he uncovered the Leisey Shell Pit site, his dreams came true in a spectacular way!

Frank said: "Attitude is everything, and so is sweat." That is how he discovered the Leisey site. For years, he traveled all over the area looking everywhere there was digging going on. He had looked over the Leisey site several times before the shell pit's digging operations uncovered a rich area of fossils in June 1983.

Then Frank asked for, and received, permission to dig from the owner, Bud Leisey. During the summer of 1983, Frank and some friends recovered many 1.4­1.7 million year old fossils from the site, probably once a delta in the northeast to southwest flow of the Little Manatee River.

Frank's group also dug test holes to find the extent of the fossil bed. Before they finished for the season, they drove metal pipes into the ground to mark the area and then covered it to prevent plundering.

In 1983, Frank contacted the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville but they weren't interested. Frank wanted to dig at the Leisey site in 1984, but needed financial backing so he could afford to quit his job and dig full time. He contacted the Florida Museum of Natural History again and showed them some of the finds. Now they were extremely interested, but they had only limited funds available. They agreed to have up to three of their people participate up to three days a week as long as all of the fossils that were found went to the museum, but they couldn't help in any other way.

When Frank showed the site to Dr. David Webb of the Florida Museum of Natural History, it was still covered, with no visible marking. Dr. Webb asked Frank how he would find the site boundaries again, and Frank replied that he would use a metal detector to find the pipes that were buried in 1983.

April 1, 1984 was the official start of the dig under Florida Museum and University of Florida auspices. At this point, our club began publicizing and financing the dig. Technically, everyone who volunteered to dig was a Tampa Bay Mineral & Science Club member because they were required to join before they were allowed to dig. The publicity attracted money, workers and national attention to the site. To raise money, the club sold T-shirts, solicited donations, and even put on a rock concert at the University of South Florida's Riverfront Park. Bud Leisey gave $5000, and some of the phosphate companies gave up to $1000. There were also many donations for smaller amounts. All told, the club managed to raise about $25,000.

Frank borrowed a motor home to live in at the site. He put an American flag, now shredded from the sun and wind, on a pole at the site and had it flying constantly. Before digging started, the dig area was marked off into a grid of six foot squares, labeled A,B,C,D... in one direction and 1,2,3,4... in the other direction. Every find was labeled with the square it had come from (B3, C15, etc.). Frank called it a "camel lot" because so many squares contained llama leg bones.

The dig was a big story, first in the local media and soon afterwards in the national media. Bob Hite and Bill Campbell from Channel 10 were part of the largest press conference for paleontology ever held in Florida. Frank said that Bob Hite and former Florida senator Pat Frank were good "friends to paleontology." Former US congressman Sam Gibbons was also a big supporter.

Frank was interviewed by telephone on The Today Show. Host Bryant Gumbel asked: "Why don't you have a degree in paleontology?" Frank answered, "Because I don't want to be stuck in an air conditioned office all day long."

The publicity brought people from all over the eastern U.S. who came to join in the dig. For example, a cardiologist from Philadelphia saw a report about the dig on CNN and came to help. A Tampa gynecologist found an elephant pelvis (everybody thought, how appropriate!). One of the club's core members at the time had been her patient. When she said, "Don't you recognize me?" the doctor's answer was "Not with your clothes on!" One volunteer was 82. They took her lots of water to drink! She continually broke things, so they kept moving her to non-sensitive grids but she found the only sabercat skull specimen of its kind ever recorded, and she recovered it very carefully.

Frank displayed 27 cases of specimens, including twenty from Leisey, at the Florida State Fair in February 1985. He buttonholed then-Governor Bob Graham and brought him to look at the fossils. The governor was very impressed and talked to Frank for some time in spite of pressure from aides to move on.

A few years ago, Frank was invited to speak at the Yale Club in New York. He wasn't used to that sort of place; he confesses to taking placemats and soap for souvenirs. Speakers in previous weeks included Tony Randall and George Bush, so Frank was very pleased to have been asked.

Newsweek Magazine said the Leisey dig secured Frank's reputation, and Frank calls it "the most important Ice Age site in eastern North America, hands down." There were 12 new species uncovered, 38 aquatic bird species found, and more giant tapir bones unearthed there than at any other site in the world. One novel find was fossilized mangrove roots wrapped around a horse jaw.

The project officially ended at a MOSI banquet, but it lives on in all of us that were involved. Frank still has the tattered flag for his museum (see "Links" for Paleo Preserve) and the Florida Museum of Natural History has enough Leisey fossils to research for perhaps as long as 100 years.