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40-590: This karst plain contains the Wakulla - Leon Sinks Cave System , the longest surveyed underwater cave in the United States, extending 32 miles (51 km) and ranking #57 among the top 100 longest caves in the world. The plain is home to five of the 27 reported species of troglobites in Florida and South Georgia including Woodville Karst cave crayfish and Swimming Florida cave isopod . Also of interest are

80-451: A dendritic network of conduits of which 12 miles (19 km) have been surveyed and mapped. The conduits are characterized as long tubes with diameter and depth being consistent (300 ft or 91 m depth); however, joining tubes can be divided by larger chambers of varying geometries. The largest conduit trends south from the spring/cave entrance for over 3.8 miles (6.1 km). Four secondary conduits, including Leon Sinks, intersect

120-539: A 24-hour dive which used only half of the system's capacity. In 1998 and 1999, Stone directed an international group of explorers consisting of over 100 volunteers to participate in the Wakulla 2 Project. Upper Paleolithic - Paleo-Indians lived at or near the spring over 13,000 years ago and were descendants of people who crossed into North America from eastern Asia during the Pleistocene . The Wakulla Lodge Site

160-623: A businessman from Virginia, bought property in Tallahassee, Florida and construction on the Wakulla Springs Lodge started in 1935. Edward Ball hired the architectural firm Marsh and Saxelbye , known for their Mediterranean style mansions. Initially, the lodge was built as a guest house and in 1981, after his death, was turned into a hotel by the Edward Ball Wildlife Foundation. The lodge is now

200-453: A combination of many, namely European folk art with Native American influences. Wakulla Springs has up to 9 miles of hiking trails. Starting from 1875, glass-bottom boat tours have been an attraction at Wakulla Springs, though the glass bottom tours do not occur as often as in previous years due to lack of water clarity. In late 1998, populations of the Florida applesnail underwent

240-463: A developing interest in the archaeology of the Colonial period United States led to Olsen's appointment by Governor Ferris Bryant as Director of Florida's Marine Salvage Committee in 1964. The natural conflicts between scientific inquiry and economic gain were poised to play out in 1960s Florida on a massive scale. The Gulf and Atlantic coasts’ abundant shipwrecks were only beginning to be recognized as

280-504: A dramatic decline; the iconic Limpkin bird followed suit and left by the fall of 1999. What was once a thriving and diverse ecosystem in north Florida is transitioning into a "biological desert", says Wakulla Springs conservationist Jim Stevenson. The Wakulla Springs basin stretches about 1,300 miles north of the spring in Florida and into some of south Georgia. The water pollution from storm water runoff, as well as nitrate -rich human water contamination through waste and pollution, seeps into

320-735: A high school diploma. Olsen joined the Florida State faculty as a tenured associate professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 1972. In 1973, Olsen accepted the concurrent positions of Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and Curator of Zooarchaeology in the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, which he held until his retirement in 1997. While in Arizona, Olsen focused his work on elucidating evidence for

360-652: A hotel with twenty-seven rooms. It is also currently a member of Historic Hotels of America , the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation . In 2002, artisans started working to conserve the ceiling of the lodge, funded in part by the State of Florida , Division of Historical Resources and the Historic Preservation Board. Each picture on the 5,800 square-foot ceiling depicts historic Floridian scenes. The techniques are

400-437: A new manager, Newt Perry , who brought publicity to Wakulla Springs. He previously worked at Silver Springs , where he worked with MGM during the production of Tarzan Finds a Son! . Perry shot a series of underwater short films at Wakulla. One notorious films is What a Picnic! , in which a picnic scene was designed underwater and teenagers would dive down and re-enact a lunch sequence. These underwater films highlighted

440-584: A resource for both scientific study and financial exploitation and the Salvage Committee's challenge was to initiate accommodation between these two potentially antithetical goals. Olsen's work on the Salvage Committee was tangentially responsible for kindling his interest in Colonial European exploitation of domestic animals, a research focus that proved lifelong and best exemplified by his innovative analysis of faunal remains recovered from

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480-521: A total of 32 miles (51 km) of surveyed passages. 30°14′41″N 84°13′46″W  /  30.2446°N 84.2294°W  / 30.2446; -84.2294 This Florida state location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Wakulla Springs Wakulla Springs is located 14 miles (23 km) south of Tallahassee, Florida and 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Crawfordville in Wakulla County, Florida at

520-772: Is one of several pre- Clovis sites in North Florida. During the first population period, Florida would have had a very dry and arid climate with a much lower shoreline. This made freshwater locations attractive to megafauna which likely led Paleo-Indians to the site. Found in and around Wakulla Springs are West Indian manatees , white-tailed deer , North American river otters , American alligators , Suwannee River cooters ( Pseudemys suwanniensis ), snapping turtles , softshell turtles , limpkin , purple gallinules , herons (including egrets ), bald eagles , anhingas , ospreys , common moorhens , wood ducks , black vultures and turkey vultures . Wakulla cave consists of

560-555: The Leon Sinks . Wakulla cave consists of a dendritic network of conduits of which 12 miles (19 km) have been surveyed and mapped. The conduits are characterized as long tubes with diameter and depth being consistent (300 ft or 91 m depth); however, joining tubes can be divided by larger chambers of varying geometries. The largest conduit trends south from the spring/cave entrance for over 3.8 miles (6.1 km). Four secondary conduits, including Leon Sinks intersect

600-730: The Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. Olsen's technical work as a preparator quickly evolved into his assignment as one of Professor Romer's two principal field supervisors. This opportunity led Olsen to the eastern coast of Canada where he prospected for Devonian fish fossils in Newfoundland and to the southeastern and western U.S. where he collected Tertiary fossils in Florida, Wyoming, and Montana and Permian and Triassic vertebrates in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. Herman Gunter's 1956 invitation to join

640-641: The Spanish ship Nuestra Señora de Atocha . While on the staff of the F.G.S., Olsen also began to publish his widely distributed and highly respected comparative osteological manuals for archaeologists. These monographs of the Peabody Museum at Harvard signaled his conscious movement away from a focus on Tertiary paleontological assemblages toward Quaternary and Holocene bone accumulations associated with archaeological sites. Under Barbara Lawrence's influence during his frequent research trips to Harvard in

680-453: The last glacial period , deposited as far as 1,200 feet (360 m) back into a cave. Today, at a depth of about 190 feet (58 m), the fossilized remains of mastodons are in full view along with other fossils. The Florida Geological Survey (FGS) commissioned their first study in August and September 1930 with geologist Herman Gunter. Gunter's work focused on the recovery of fossils found in

720-543: The Black Lagoon , Revenge of the Creature , Night Moves , Airport '77 and Joe Panther starring Brian Keith and Ricardo Montalbán were also filmed on location at Wakulla Springs. Most of the movie history can be traced back to Edward Ball , who purchased the land surrounding Wakulla in 1934. Initially, Wakulla was not a tourist destination, but rather a reclusive resort. This changed when Ball hired

760-683: The Florida Geological Survey, Olsen helped pioneer the use of both SCUBA and helmeted diving equipment to explore the rich underwater fossil deposits of central and north Florida's rivers and springs. His work with colleagues in the Ichetucknee, Aucilla, and Wacissa rivers and in Wakulla Springs is especially well known because remains of mammoths and mastodons were found in association with bone and stone artifacts of human manufacture. His familiarity with SCUBA and

800-773: The Stanley J. Olsen Laboratory of Zooarchaeology, and the Stanley J. Olsen Zooarchaeology Endowment Fund was created at the University of Arizona in 2004 to recognize his contributions to the field. Stanley Olsen was a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology , the Society for American Archaeology , the Society of the Sigma Xi , the Society of Mammalogists, and the American Society of Systematic Zoologists. He

840-702: The United States Navy, achieving the rank of machinist mate first class while serving aboard the USS ; Mertz , Bunker Hill and Wyoming , and at naval bases on the U.S. East Coast and at Mare Island Navy Yard, California, during the Second World War. Following his Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Navy in November 1945, Olsen found employment as a fossil preparator in the vertebrate paleontological laboratory of Alfred Sherwood Romer in

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880-486: The aquatic environment that Wakulla Springs offered. Besides these short films, Perry is credited with luring the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Tarzan crews to Wakulla Springs, whose environment would act as a stand in for Africa. Grantland Rice also shot scenes from a lesser known movie at Wakulla Springs, Amphibious Fighters (1943), in which an amphibious battle was staged. In 1931, Edward Ball,

920-536: The bear-dog, Amphicyon , and their kin) in the late 1950s and early 1960s is regarded as foundational for subsequent studies of those and related species. Olsen's analysis of the Thomas Farm carnivores not only established him as a vertebrate paleontologist, but also put him in contact with like-minded scholars the world over, including China, where he nurtured contacts that ultimately came to fruition during his many research trips there beginning in 1976. In 1963,

960-506: The coyote-like Metatomarctus and the ancestral horse, Parahippus , as well as a host of other species, on the margins of an 18-million-year-old wooded sinkhole and cave complex. Tens of thousands of fossils have been uncovered during more than 70 years of research at the site, ranging from frogs and bats to rhinoceroses and bears. Olsen's work on the Thomas Farm Caninae (dog-like carnivores, including Metatomarctus and

1000-807: The crossroads of State Road 61 and State Road 267 . It is protected in the Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park . Wakulla cave is a branching flow-dominated cave that has developed in the Floridan Aquifer under the Woodville Karst Plain of north Florida. It is classified as a first magnitude spring and a major exposure point for the Floridan Aquifer. The spring forms the Wakulla River which flows 9 miles (14 km) to

1040-555: The domestication of a number of vertebrate species, especially the dog, camel, and yak. During his half-century professional career, Olsen conducted paleontological and zooarchaeological fieldwork in the U.S., Canada, Colombia, Belize, China, Tibet, India, Italy, Cyprus, and Nepal and worked extensively with museum collections in Great Britain, Russia, Egypt, and Sweden as well as the United States. The Arizona State Museum's comparative vertebrate skeletal collections are housed in

1080-529: The first zooarchaeology teaching laboratories in the country (along with those at Harvard University, the University of Tennessee, the Field Museum in Chicago, and the University of Florida). Olsen's transition from the mainly research-oriented environments of museums and the Florida Geological Survey to a broader spectrum academic career is especially noteworthy because he accomplished that feat holding only

1120-499: The late 1950s and early 1960s, Olsen began to work more and more closely with archaeologists in their then fledgling attempts to incorporate the analysis and interpretation of animal remains from anthropogenic deposits into the body of traditional archaeological literature. In 1968, Olsen accepted Hale G. Smith's invitation to join the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at Florida State University where he established one of

1160-572: The main conduit. Most of these secondary conduits have been fully explored. On Dec 15, 2007, the connection between the Wakulla cave system and Leon Sinks cave system was made by members of the Woodville Karst Plain Project to establish the Wakulla-Leon Sinks Cave System . This connection established it as the longest underwater cave in the United States and the sixth largest in the world at

1200-676: The main conduit. Most of these secondary conduits have been fully explored. On December 15, 2007, Woodville Karst Plain Project divers physically connected the Wakulla Springs and Leon Sinks cave systems establishing the Wakulla-Leon Sinks cave system. This connection established the system as the longest underwater cave in the United States and the sixth largest in the world with a total of 31.99 miles (51.48 km) of explored and surveyed passages. Flow rate of

1240-700: The renowned ornithologist Pierce Brodkorb honored Olsen's work by naming the first fossil stork described from the Tertiary of North America after him. The holotype of the ciconiid, Propelargus olseni , is a partial left tarsometatarsus discovered by Olsen in August 1961 in Middle Hemingfordian Torreya Formation deposits near Tallahassee and is now in the Florida Museum of Natural History's Pierce Brodkorb Ornithology Collection (catalog number 8504). During his tenure at

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1280-501: The soil, and thus the spring. Cave dive sites: Stanley J. Olsen Stanley John Olsen (24 June 1919 – 23 December 2003) was an American vertebrate paleontologist and one of the founding figures of zooarchaeology in the United States. Olsen was also recognized as an historical archaeologist and scholar of United States military insignia, especially buttons of the American Colonial through Civil War periods. He

1320-499: The southeast where it joins the St. Mark's River. After a short 5 miles (8.0 km) the St. Mark's empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Apalachee Bay . Scientific interest in the spring began in 1850, when Sarah Smith reported seeing the bones of an ancient mastodon on the bottom. Since that time, scientists have identified the remains of at least nine other extinct mammals that date to

1360-453: The spring basin. He utilized hard hat diving techniques, a dredge , and "long-handled grappling tongs". A mastodon recovered from their work is now on display at the Museum of Florida History . The FGS conducted additional studies at Wakulla Springs in 1955, 1956, and 1962 under the direction of vertebrate paleontologist, Stanley J. Olsen . Olsen's team of six divers from Florida State University discovered animal fossils deeper within

1400-417: The spring complex where they also found archaeological evidence of early humans, including bone and stone tools. Ultimately, the presumed behavioral association among the recovered cultural and fossil materials could not be demonstrated unequivocally because of the difficulty of establishing and maintaining provenience control in a submerged spring-vent context. A major further exploration of Wakulla Springs

1440-486: The spring is 200–300 million US gallons (760,000–1,140,000 m ) of water a day. A record peak flow from the spring on April 11, 1973 was measured at 14,324 US gallons (54,220 L) per second – equal to 1.2 billion US gallons (4,500,000 m ) per day. Beginning in 1938, several of the early Tarzan films including Tarzan's New York Adventure starring Johnny Weissmuller were filmed on location in Wakulla Springs. Other films such as Creature from

1480-589: The staff of the Florida Geological Survey in Tallahassee as State Vertebrate Paleontologist signaled the beginning of Olsen's scholarly career. One of Olsen's first tasks was reopening excavations at the Thomas Farm site in Gilchrist County, Florida. The Thomas Farm locality, discovered in 1931, has produced the best known early Miocene terrestrial vertebrate fauna east of the U.S. Rocky Mountains. This unique site records predator-prey interactions of

1520-645: The underground aquifer and trickles down and flows out of the Wakulla spring as water at the end of the pipe. Measures have been taken to lessen the contamination of the spring. The City of Tallahassee has built Cascades Park , a storm water drainage point disguised as a municipal park for citizens. This helps reduce the amount of contaminated water entering the basin. The City of Tallahassee has also increased regulations on their wastewater. Factors that may reduce contamination include lowering pollution, using less harsh fertilizers and better waste solutions other than septic tanks that leak large amounts of nitrates into

1560-458: Was conducted in October–December 1987 by an expedition led by Dr. Bill Stone . The expedition team, which also included Sheck Exley and Wesley C. Skiles , penetrated the cave system to a distance of 4,160 feet (1,270 m) from the cave entrance. Skiles filmed the expedition for a National Geographic special. During the expedition Stone's Cis-Lunar Mk-1 rebreather was demonstrated in

1600-594: Was the father of John W. Olsen . Stanley Olsen was born in Akron, Ohio to John Mons Olsen (of Bergen, Norway) and Louise Marquardt (of Akron), the second of two sons. After his graduation from high school in 1938, Olsen worked as a tool and die maker at the National Rubber Machinery Company in Akron until his marriage to Eleanor Louise Vinez (1917–2016) in 1942. He subsequently enlisted in

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