First Floridians and Last Mastodons: The Page-Ladson Site in the Aucilla River

This book presents the multidisciplinary results of an extensive underwater excavation in north Florida. This yielded the most complete results of interactions between early Paleoindians and late Pleistocene megafauna, in a rich environmental context in eastern North America. The data provides fundamental insights into 'the Peopling of the Americas' and 'The Extinction of the Megafauna'. An excellent color photo section expresses the uniqueness of this project.


During four decades of service to the Florida Museum of Natural History, David Webb led paleontological excavations at two dozen major sites within the Late Cenozoic Era. Some of these, including the Aucilla River Prehistory Project, involved unique SCUBA excavations yielding extraordinary wet-site preservation. Professor Webb served as President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Guggenheim Fellow in western Europe, Visiting Professor of Geology at Yale University, and Distinguished Visiting Curator at the Field Museum in Chicago. He has conducted field work in Central and South America, Africa, China and Australia. He has edited or authored six books, and written some 200 scientific papers.

Outstanding specialists from other leading universities, U of Colorado, Columbia, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Santa Cruz, Stanford, and Texas have lent their expertise to this extraordinary project.