The Bone Seeker

During the dry winter months, when the Peace River shrinks into a series of shallow pools and gravel bars, Dr. David Bloom can be found wading through the brown water with a handmade sifting screen. Bloom, seventy-three, is a retired paleontologist who spent his career in the dusty archives of Midwestern universities. Now, he spends his days searching the limestone bed of this Southwest Florida river for the fossilized remains of Miocene-era marine life. His house in Arcadia is a museum of prehistoric debris, its bookshelves piled high with the petrified ribs of dugongs, the armor plates of ancient armadillos, and the massive, triangular teeth of the extinct shark Carcharocles megalodon.

The paradox of Bloom’s retirement is that his search for deep geological time has alienated him from the modern world. He finds himself unable to care about daily news cycles or political disputes, viewing them as brief, insignificant static in a story that has been unfolding for twenty million years. He is a man who lives in the epoch of the mastodons, yet he is constantly bothered by the hum of the nearby state highway. "People think Florida is a new place because of the stucco and the plastic," Bloom said, holding a black shark tooth up to the sunlight. "But under this sand, it is old beyond any human comprehension."

As the sun begins to dip below the cypress canopy, casting long shadows across the water, Bloom empties another screen of gravel onto a gravel bar. Among the limestone pebbles, a perfectly preserved, three-inch megalodon tooth glistens like a fragment of obsidian. He picks it up, turning it over in his hand, feeling the sharp, serrated edges that have survived millions of years of river current. It is an extraordinary find, worth hundreds of dollars to collectors, but Bloom will simply add it to his backyard pile. For him, the pleasure lies not in the value of the bone, but in the brief, electric moment of discovery.