SANTA CRUZ — Erin Petersen Lindberg and Rebecca Mussetter bonded over a shared 3-foot-by-3-foot patch of dirt in the humid Florida heat, traveling nearly 3,000 miles to do so.

The whoops of joy the duo shared from a cell phone recording while sitting next to each other outside DeLaveaga Elementary School this week conveyed the pair’s excitement when they separately uncovered pieces of an approximately 5-million-year-old extinct elephant beneath their feet.

Before that, the two had worked at separate Santa Cruz City Schools less than a mile from each other for years, without having met before.

On their journey to Gainesville, Florida, the teachers, in addition to two others from Santa Cruz County, found themselves working side-by-side with University of Florida scientists and some 18 other teachers June 23 and 24. Though others found evidence of prehistoric life in the former river system dig site, the Santa Cruz pair found the largest mammal fossils of the trip, including a tusk, rib, humerus and neck vertebra of Miocene Epoch-era gomphotherium elephant.

Now back in Santa Cruz, Petersen Lindberg and Mussetter are looking forward to the new school year, where they will integrate what they have learned in their classroom lessons.

“In Santa Cruz County, we have such a rich fossil history here. I’ll be able to take the excitement and say, look what I was able to do this summer,” said Mussetter, who teaches third-grade. “‘And it’s not something that’s beyond your reach, kids. It’s right here, it’s at beach.’ I really want to teach Santa Cruz County through that lens. What used to live here.”

The two were part of an enrichment program that partners teachers from around the country with the University of Florida and Florida Museum of Natural History, where the uncovered fossils will be catalogued and stored. The three-year National Science Foundation grant-funded program is designed to build paleontology-based curriculum supporting science, technology, engineering and mathematics around 3-D modeling technology in sixth-grade through 12th-grade. Bringing in primary school teachers such as Mussetter is part of a parallel effort to expand the curriculum to younger students.

“It’s not just a secondary thing, it can be an elementary thing. Everybody can do science, everybody can be excited about science, we all can be scientists on some level. That’s what I’m excited about,” said Petersen Lindberg, who teaches sixth-grade at Branciforte Middle School in Santa Cruz. “And not just science. You can learn English and history and math and technology, all though the lens of science.”

Program leader Bruce MacFadden spent the past school year on sabbatical from the University of Florida as a visiting scientist with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education. The paleontologist forged ties with Santa Cruz when he met former Santa Cruz City Schools Superintendent Gary Bloom at a fossil show some seven years ago, where the two hatched an idea of an exchange putting teachers out in the field on archeological digs and scientists in front of school classrooms, said Petersen Lindberg.

“You’re not going in with a shovel and digging down deep. You’re moving millimeter by millimeters of the sediment back to expose potentially what’s underneath,” Petersen Lindberg said.

“It cracked me up, because the tools were a bucket, a shovel, a flathead screwdriver, a dental pick and a trowel,” Mussetter added. “I just thought they’d be specialized tools.”

Last year, Petersen Lindberg also spent 11 days at a related archeological dig on the shores of the Panama Canal through the Great American Biotic Interchange, Research Experiences for Teachers. Since then, she has invited some of the scientists and interns she worked with into her classroom, via a video link in an online chat service.

“I’m learning along with them, because I’m not a fossil expert, I’m not a paleontologist. Any opportunity that comes up related to fossils, I’m fascinated and I want to learn more,” Petersen Lindberg said.

FOSSIL FINDINGS

Gomphotherium is an ancient elephant-like mammal found fossilized in California and beyond. They had four conical tusks and were smaller than the modern-day elephants known from Asia and Africa. After migrating into North America from the Old World, they spread as far south as Panama, where their fossil remains have also been found.

Source: Santa Cruz City Schools. —— (c)2016 the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.) Visit the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.) at www.santacruzsentinel.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. AMX-2016-07-15T05:16:00-04:00