Monday, August 15, 2016

8/15/16 Report - An Important Warning. Treasure Coast Fossils. A Spanish Shipwreck. Spanish Horses.


Written by the TreaureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Horse Teeth Found On Treasure Coast Beaches.

First I have some bad news and an important warning.  Last weekend two beach-goers were robbed at gun point while leaving the beach at Pepper Park after 10 PM.  It is always necessary to be cautious, but especially when it is dark or when there aren't many people around.  The suspects, who were not caught, were in a white Volkswagen Passat.  A car break-in is one thing, but having a gun pointed at you is something else.

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Horses were brought to the New World by the conquistadors.  But that wasn't the first time that horses were in America.  Horses were in the Americas long before the Europeans arrived.  Then they died out and were reintroduced by the Spanish.

Here is what the horsetalk web site says.


The end of the Pleistocene epoch – the geological period roughly spanning 12,000 to 2.5 million years ago, coincided with a global cooling event and the extinction of many large mammals. Evidence suggests North America was hardest hit by extinctions.
This extinction event saw the demise of the horse in North America..

Here is the link.

Fossilized teeth of the preColumbian horses can be found on the Treasure Coast beaches when conditions are right.

Four horse teeth are shown at the top of the post.  Three are black.  Those three are fossilized horse teeth from thousand or millions of years ago.

The lighter colored horse tooth is a modern horse tooth that was found on a Treasure Coast beach.  It is sitting in a small  piece of the jaw bone.  
Most of you know that you can occasionally find fossil shark teeth on the beach, but there are a lot of other kinds of fossils that will appear on the beach when conditions are right.

If you didn't love that article on horsetalk, try this one.  It is about a Spanish shipwreck and the horses that survived the wreck and whose ancestors roam Americas pasture lands today.

Here is an excerpt.

...there really was a Spanish galleon wrecked on Assateague Island. On September 5, 1750, the 56-gun Spanish warship, La Galga, drove ashore in shallow water at Assateague, diverted by a hurricane from her intended course from Havana, Cuba, to Spain. The ship did not sink and no-one died on board. However, it took three days for everyone to gain the shore by swimming, rafts, and Native American canoes. Several of the Spaniards drowned in the surf with bags of money tied to their belts. Several others were not strong enough to swim the short distance.


Immediately after the Spaniards left, the locals began salvaging and the dismantling the ship. By late October, La Galga had been cut to the water line but she still held the valuable cargo of mahogany planks in her lower hold. In early November, a north-east storm wrenched the gun deck loose, allowing the mahogany to wash ashore. Sand immediately filled in the hull and covered what was left. This event would be remembered by succeeding generations and the sudden appearance of small horses on the island were linked to this shipwreck.

I'm sure you will enjoy reading the rest of this.  Here is the link.


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I have a lot more to talk about but got a late start.

There is a new disturbance that has a 50%  chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 48 hours.

It is still closer to Africa than the West Indies.  I wouldn't be surprised if it forms early and spins off into the North Atlantic, but who knows.  We'll have to see what happens.

That is all for now.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net