The Mystique of PETRIFIED ANTLERS
More than a million years ago, a mature whitetail buck was walking the edge of a saltwater drainage in what is now Florida. Su ddenly, he was brought down by a predator doing what predators do best. He might have been killed by a canine, feline, huge raptor or one of many carnivorous animals that inhabited remote Florida. (Remote Florida? The entire world was remote in that era.) Prehistoric bison, camels, horses, alligators, giant sloths, woolly mammoths, dire wolves, short-faced bears, sabertoothed tigers and hundreds of other species inhabited Florida then. And yes, our beloved whitetails were also there.
That gives credit to the whitetail’s ability to adapt. The species has changed little in more than 2 million years. In the aforementioned scenario, the buck probably died at the edge of a swampy drainage in a foot or so of brackish water, mud and silt. Buried, the skull and rack were quickly isolated from scavengers and rodents. Ancient water levels rose because of multiple storms that caused flooding. The antlers and skull were
