By Dan DeWitt, Times Columnist
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Members of the Hernando Audubon Society trek across the Weekiwachee Preserve on Saturday, passing a mangrove plant, a saltwater plant usually found closer to the coast. Group leader Clay Black said seeing the plant this far inland is one example that demonstrates the rise of the saltwater in the area.
If the vast expanse of black needlerush made the coastal marsh feel a little like the high plains, then the twisted, sun-bleached roots — relics of a long-gone stand of pines — was the ghost town.
And just when I thought all we needed to complete the picture was a skull, Clay Black pointed to a skeleton on a patch of bare sand.
"Do we have a mammalogist in the crowd?" asked Mike Wollam, a retired Pasco-Hernando Community College biology professor, who picked up the white head bone of what appeared to be ...