(ENN) -- More than 14,000 years ago, enormous bison, camels and mastodons could be found roaming the Georgia coastline. At the time, the coastline extended 60 miles beyond the current Georgia shoreline, and is therefore now completely underwater. Some 60 feet below the ocean's surface, scientists with Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary are uncovering remnants of prehistoric animal life and hoping to find clues to climate change as well.

These underwater discoveries of fossils and ancient plant life give clues to the climate of the past and may provide insight to the effects of future climate change and global warming. Sanctuary divers, using only their hands to brush away sand covering the limestone outcropping, have uncovered mastodon and bison bones, the tooth of a Pleistocene horse and marine worm burrow cast (radiocarbon date of 18,000-plus years old).

In other areas of the reef, divers have drilled thin corings in the reef and recovered pine pollen and alder and grass seeds. Dr. Erv Garrison, a University of Georgia marine archeologist, hopes one day to find the tools used by Paleo-Indian hunters, who followed the animal herds.

Plant fossils give scientists important information about ancient shorelines and the rise of sea levels, according to Gray's Reef's education coordinator Sarah Mitchell. Learning more about the historic patterns of changing sea levels and ancient distribution of plants and animals will help scientists predict future effects of ocean rise in our coastal areas.

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