Sharks Released Off Coast

Two nurse sharks at the University of Georgia aquarium on Skidaway Island have been given a more spacious home - the Atlantic Ocean. Aquarium staffers released the two sharks off Ossabaw Island yesterday at an artificial reef after attempts to find them a home at the Charleston and Georgia aquariums failed.

The nurse sharks had outgrown their tank. One was named Hoover for the suctioning noise he made while he ate. He was in captivity for nine years. The other, a newer one, was called his girlfriend.

Nurse sharks can be found in shallow coastal waters of the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific. Scientists say they rarely bite humans.

(Associated Press)

Indian creamation mounds found on Ossabaw Island

Exposed by erosion at the edge of a crumbling bluff, the pit discovered beneath 2 feet of sandy dirt at first appeared to be a grave just long and deep enough to bury a human body.

Excavation by archeologists on Ossabaw Island revealed something more puzzling: just a few small bones, apparently from fingers or toes, mixed with charcoal, bits of burned logs, and pottery shards predating the arrival of the first European explorers by at least a century.

The find has led researchers to suspect American Indians used the ancient pit to burn bodies of the dead, making it a rare example of cremation among the early native inhabitants of the southeastern United States.

"It's a special sort of burial," said Tom Gresham, an Athens archeologist who worked on the excavation and serves on Georgia's Council on American Indian Concerns. "The way Indian tribes over time buried their dead varied tremendously. But cremations are fairly rare."

Located 6 miles off the Savannah coast, Ossabaw Island remains one of Georgia's wildest barrier islands. Hogs, deer, armadillos, and Sicilian donkeys roam the state-owned island's 11,800 acres of wishbone-shaped uplands. Live oaks tower above the remains of slave plantations and ancient Indian burial mounds.

Researchers have found evidence that humans came to Ossabaw more than 4,000 years ago. It's believed Indians at first may have used the island as a winter camp to feed on shellfish before moving inland in the spring.

Burial mounds on Ossabaw typically hold intact human remains, said Dave Crass, Georgia's state archeologist. Archeologists said yesterday that carbon dating on charcoal from the pit place it between 1290 and 1420 AD.

Archeologists initially thought the pit could be 1,000 to 3,000 years old, based on pottery shards they found. Though carbon dating revealed it to be more recent, the find is still considered prehistoric because it predates the arrival of the first European explorers in Georgia in 1520.

Crass said other prehistoric graves on Ossabaw tend to be bodies buried intact, in a near fetal position, in shallow bowl-shaped pits. "What makes this particular site unusual is that the individual was apparently cremated and then the remains were presumably taken from this pit and interred somewhere else," Crass said.

(AP)

Archeologists announce rare find

Archeologists have discovered a pre-historic crematory on the Georgia coast. The pit on Ossabaw Island was used by American Indians more than a 1,000 years ago to cremate their dead. Only a few small bones were found, leading archaeologists to believe a body was burned and most of the remaining skeleton was buried elsewhere. Dave Crass, Georgia's state archaeologist, said it's unusual to find evidence of Indian cremations in the Southeast. Most prehistoric Indians buried their dead in shallow graves.

(Associated Press)