Little Salt Spring

Sinkhole

The Little Salt Spring is an archaeological and paleontological finds place in Sarasota County in the western part of the U.S. state of Florida. Located in the Butler - park in the city Northport find site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 10, 1979.

Geology

Originally it was assumed that it was at the Little Salt Spring is a relatively shallow freshwater pond. Only in the 1950s discovered divers, that this is a very deep, genuine sinkholes. These sinkholes provide a typical feature of karst Florida landscape dar. The lake has on the water surface has a diameter of about 70 meters. The profile of the karst funnel has a generally hourglass shape. First, the bottom of the lake from the banks falls evenly to a depth of about 12 meters, where it forms the narrowest point with an average diameter of 14 meters. Among them, the cave widened again, is in 16 meters depth, a small and at 27 meters more sharply defined level. Among the cave continuously broadened further to the bottom. The largest, previously determined depth is at the outer edges of the cave about 76 meters and under the center of the lake about 60 feet below the present water level. The bottom of the cave has a diameter of 73 meters. The sinkhole is fed by numerous holes in the ground with oxygen-poor ground water, which creates hypoxide conditions below a water depth of 3 meters and extremely impaired aquatiles life. This lack of oxygen promotes the conservation and paläoindianischer früharchaischer artifacts such as fossil bones of extinct megafauna that once populated Florida.

Since 1980 belongs to the Lake of the University of Miami and has been studied scientifically by Dr. John Gifford the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami.

Findings

Over time, the water level of the lake varied widely. 12000-13000 years ago, the sea level was about 100 meters lower than today, what the groundwater level on the Florida peninsula also absenkte. The lake level was placed 27 meters below the present surface. Later on dead plant material in the basin of the lake and surrounding swamp outsourced to. In the bottom of numerous burials were excavated from the period around 4800-3200 BC, and similar in Windover well-preserved tissue residues were recovered at the remains. In the 1970s, one lying on the carapace of a now extinct giant tortoise was recovered at the level at 27 meters, through which a wood floor was driven. Scorch marks on the object indicate that it may have been cooked over a fire. The 14C dating of a sample from the wood, had an age of 12,030 years, and the sample from a bone of the turtle was an age of 13,450 years. In addition, also a large number of human bones was discovered, which were preserved by the low oxygen water, but were not recovered.