Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 17:31:31 -0700 From: Mark Steingart  Subject: The History of Little Salt and Warm Mineral Drew Glasbrenner wrote: > > I have absolutely no idea who this is, but the paper said he was a cave > diver. I'll paraphrase the article as it appeared in today's St Pete Times. > > Carl Jon Clausen was arrested Sunday and charged with murdering his wife > Cynthia. He was also charged with shooting and wounding three Gadsen County > deputies and riddling more than a dozen patrol cars with automatic gunfire > during a five day manhunt. He was caught by John Pretti, his former son in > law and a Tallahasse police officer. Clausen was a former Gadsen County > Deputy and had just resigned as acting Cheif of Police for Midway City. > > The paper credits Clausen as first ever official underwater archaeologist > for Florida, member of the Warm mineral Springs (FL) expedition, and leader > of the Little Salt Springs expedition. > > Drew In fact, the Little Salt that this refers to is the Paleokarst feature located in Northport, Florida.(Sarasota County) In the late 1950's and through to the 1970's a group led by Air Force Lt.Col. (Ret) William Royal explored this site as well as Warm Mineral Spring (3 miles distant) and discovered huge deposits of fossils. Remains of literally hundreds of species from saber toothed cats to Giant ground sloths were discovered along with the remains of over 200 paleo-indians. Clausen was instrumental in bringing scientific credibility to a project that was derided by the experts as a hoax for several important reasons. Number one was the fact that until the discoveries at Little Salt, The oldest evidence of human existence on the eastern seaboard was dated to about 8000 years of age. The evidence came from caves in West Va. and due to the presence of Ice Sheets hundreds of feet thick across what is now the Great Plains, it was generally accepted that there were no humans in the eastern U.S. until about that time.(The end of the last Ice age) The Little Salt discoveries changed all that because some of the human remains that were discovered were radio carbon dated to over 11,000 years, Which meant that accepted thinking had to be changed. Couple that with the fact that some of the most important archeaological material that has been discovered in the U.S. up to that time was discovered by a layman (a retired Air Force Lt. Col who bragged about riding on the backs of sharks) and you can see why the scientific community immediately claimed the whole thing was a Hoax. Then there was the Brain incident.... In his efforts to bring some attention to Warm Mineral and Little Salt, Royal arranged for NBC to do a piece to be broadcast on network T.V. During the filming Royal surfaced with a freshly excavated Human Skull (which simply appeared too pat for credentialed scientists - Kind of like a Geraldo Rivera Special on Al Capone or something equally hokey) Well he apparently began rinsing what appeared to be clayey depositional material out of the skull and was stopped by horrified scientists who by that time were beginning to realize the significance of what he had - A Human Skull with Brain matter that was preserved by the highly anaerobic water dated to about 10,000 years of age. The problem with the material (though you never hear this part) was that it had absolutely no cellular structure left to it, and was really nothing but a bunch of proteins and organic material with a soupy consistency that had virtually no scientific value other than to say "yes it was a brain." Now if Royal had handled it properly, the question is what would they have had really? All in all, you really can't blame these guys because they were doing things nobody had done before and were bound to make mistakes. The real Tragedy is they did so much undocumented excavation at Warm Mineral that the place was essentially wrecked when real scientists finally got their act together. Little Salt is presently owned by the University of Miami -Rosensteihle School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and they are very jealous about letting divers in there. Warm Mineral is a tourist attraction and they occasionally allow Diving if there is a valid reason, (like Curt Bowen's survey project of 1996 that I was priveledged to be a part of). Both sites are the only known karst features in Florida that have documented Speleothems, stalactites, stalagmites and flowstones. As a small factoid to go with this story, During dives in Little Salt in the early 1970's, Carl Clausen refers to a young but inexperienced cave diver that he and Royal were going to use as a "safety diver". That Divers Name? - Sheck Exley! Mark Steingart