Celebrate Florida Archaeology Month
Learn about Florida’s history through the artifacts and objects found at our state parks.
The fossil shell of a giant land tortoise is a highly prized artifact at Highlands Hammock State Park. The fossilized shell is on permanent display in the Hammock Inn, where it wows visitors with measurements of nearly 3-feet by 4-feet by 5-feet. Individual plates in the shell measure 5-inches in diameter.
The discovery of the tortoise is a remarkable story. In 1933, while work crews were excavating a ditch for laying a pipe through the orange grove near the entrance of the hammock, they uncovered vertebrate fossils of mastodon or mammoth tusks at a depth of 3-4 feet below the surface of the ground. The tusks disintegrated on exposure to the air, and when the shell and bones of the tortoise were found directly below the tusks, Jack Connery, an anthropologist from Rollins College, came to supervise further excavation. Connery and his wife labored for many hours to uncover the fossil, painstakingly scraping and applying shellac so air was excluded and preservation was ensured.
In life, the weight of the tortoise was estimated to have been greater than 500 pounds. Although the exact age of the tortoise was never determined, it is believed to have lived during the Ice Age, which ended 25,000 years ago. Dr. Harry S. Ladd with the U.S. Geological Survey examined the tortoise in 1939 and thought that it may have been considerably older, possibly dating back to the Miocene period.
No other fossils were found, which would have enabled a more accurate determination of the age.
That same year, Clarence Simpson, Florida Geological Survey, completed the restoration by removing any remaining marl and restoring missing parts of the shell with plaster. H.S. Ladd was of the opinion that Highlands Hammock’s “old turtle” had been a member of the Testudinidae family, whose living relatives are found on the Galapagos Islands.
