If you haven't signed up for the Tapir Challenge yet, the Florida Museum of Natural History has a bone to pick with you.
The museum's Division of Vertebrate Paleontology needs volunteers as it conducts a major fossil excavation about two miles northeast of Newberry from Tuesday to Dec. 20.
Dr. Richard Hulbert, the museum's vertebrate paleontology collections manager, said that the Tapir Challenge is an effort to collect as many fossils as possible at the site, which is called Haile 7G.
The excavation is called a "challenge" because the Gainesville site and a site in Tennessee have been in a competition to see which can find the most tapirs, he said.
The tapir specimens, the most common find at the site, are from about 2 million years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch, Hulbert said.
Fossils of more than 70 individual tapirs have been found in Gainesville, Hulbert said, and hundreds of other fossils, such as fish, frogs and snakes, have also been dug up.
Hulbert said he would still like to find some more rare or unusual animals.
He calls the excavation a salvage operation because there is "a limited amount of time to recover as many fossils as possible" due to erosion and mining that will soon take over the site.
Between September 2006 and May, 320 volunteers contributed more than 4,100 hours at the site, according to the museum's Web site.
Rachel Wendt, a third-year graduate student in geology, said that fossils help geologists learn more about individual species, determine the ages of certain areas and rocks and understand what life was like in the past.
Wendt has collected fossils at many locations including Newfoundland and New Mexico, but not at Haile 7G yet. She is considering volunteering there this year.
"It is a great opportunity to learn how to dig for fossils professionally, and you don't even need previous training," she said. "Most people go to school for more than four years to get to do this stuff."
Hulbert said he depends on volunteers to get as much manpower in the field as possible.
Volunteers will be assigned to different areas from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day except for the Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 22 to Nov. 23.
