PROFILE

Fossil Hunter: Frank Garcia

Just a short walk from the Little Manatee River in Ruskin is a “Rex” room that would put any man-cave to shame. No ordinary hominid retreat, this is the prehistoric play den of self-taught paleontologist Frank Garcia, whose 1983 discovery at nearby Cockroach Bay unearthed a cache of prehistoric fossils that included at least 10 animals new to science.

Not bad for a kid who flunked first grade.

Lining the walls of Garcia’s converted basement garage are priceless artifacts of natural history – ancient coral heads from Tampa Bay, a 7-million-year-old skull from a giant crocodile and a 40-million-year-old rhino skull from his Nebraska ranch. “Rex,” a mammoth replica skull of the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton discovered in South Dakota in 1990, stands guard in front of the musician’s speakers and microphone, a clue to his diverse interests.

“This is my 401k,” says Garcia, who buys and trades fossils and crystals for his extensive collection. He’s even had an animal named after him – Nano Siren Garcia, a prehistoric sea cow related to the modern manatee, which he found on the property of the phosphate company Mosaic.

Garcia grew up on Tampa’s west side and in Ybor City where his grandfather was president of the Cuban Club. Like every red-blooded American boy, he was enthralled with dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts of all kinds. His childhood was spent combing the banks of the Hillsborough River and his grandparent’s small farm near Lake Okeechobee for fossils, a passion that grew after reading a book about the famous fossil hunter, Roy Chapman Andrews, who inspired the movie character Indiana Jones.

After high school, he installed asbestos insulation for a living, searching for fossils in his spare time. He’s also an accomplished musician, singing with the Tedd Webb All Stars and recently recorded a song recalling the magical memories of the Ybor City he knew in his youth. Corazon De Tampa, or “heart” of Tampa, is available on YouTube.

Miracle at Cockroach Bay
The Leisey shell pits at Cockroach Bay have been called one of the richest ice-age sites in the world. A quarter century ago, Garcia scarcely could have imagined the scope of the discovery that awaited him on a stormy evening after returning home from a trip to Nebraska.

Garcia had searched the mine for years, looking for ancient sea cows and uncovering horse and llama teeth, but it was a dramatic increase in fossils bones that tipped him to the fact that the site held even more clues to our past.

In 1983, as rains washed away the shell and sand in the pit, Garcia spotted hundreds of fossils and lightning revealed the skull portions of various animals. With the help of the Tampa Bay Mineral and Science Club and the University of Florida, Garcia organized a dig with 175 volunteers. Crews filled two semi-trailers with fossils.

The dig netted over 140 prehistoric animals including 10 previously undiscovered. Here, beautifully preserved, was a record of Tampa Bay two million years ago. Plucked from the earth were the bones of a giant beever nearly eight feet tall, an extinct condor with a twelve-foot wing span, llamas, horses and great white sharks. The Leisey site also revealed the only complete skull of a sabre-toothed cat, Smilodon cracilis, found in North America.

According to Clayton Ray at the Smithsonian, “this site was like finding a new chapter in the history of life.”
“Looking back, who ever would have guessed that the Leisey farms contained an incredible bone bed just eight feet below crops of tomato and cauliflower,” said Garcia.

The discovery catapulted Garcia to instant celebrity and put Hillsborough County on the archaeological map. There were write-ups in National Geographic, interviews on CNN and Garcia’s “eight terrifying minutes with Bryant Gumbel” on the Today Show. Visits from the Smithsonian and University of Florida followed, institutions that now hold many of the Leisey fossils.

Local Recognition Lacking, New Species Awaiting Discovery
What miffs Garcia today is that there are no markers to celebrate the site of such an historic discovery. Traveling down Highway 41 near Ruskin, no one would suspect that one of the greatest ice-age fossil sites lies just a quarter-mile away. “We still can’t even get a bronze marker designating the site of this discovery,” he says.

“Paleontology is the Rodney Dangerfield of the sciences,” he adds. “It just doesn’t get the respect it deserves.
Not so with kids, he notes. “A six-inch giant megaladon shark tooth will trump the Mona Lisa any time with 1000 kids,” he says. “This stuff is alive in their imagination.”

He now shares that passion with children through the Paleo Preserve, a paleontological field trip site in Ruskin where school children can search for fossils on their own in a pit Garcia stocks with fossils he has found or purchased. The ‘hands-on’ discovery enthralls the children who are able to keep their treasures.

Today, Garcia divides time between Tampa and his ranch in Nebraska where he takes fossil hunters on field trips. “There’s so much pride for the heritage there, but not so here,” he says.

He’s convinced that he found a new species of animal on Mosaic property about four years ago, but hasn’t been able to get access to the property to search further. And he worries about people sneaking onto the property and putting fossils up for sale on sites like Ebay.

“Florida was a lush, lush place to live if you were a grass eater or carnivore,” Garcia says. With only one way in and out, the Florida peninsula was like a “grocery store for carnivores.”