Amateur Paleontologist Wants to Get Rid of the Skeletons in His Closet : Fossils: He’s a professional diver by trade. Murky rivers and sinkholes have yielded prize specimens of prehistoric animals that are now for sale.

Don Serbousek has a 130,000-year-old skeleton of a giant ground sloth he wants to sell.

It’s up in his attic, alongside the 12,000-year-old bones of what may be the largest prehistoric mastodon ever found in North America. The woolly haired mastodon, an elephant-like creature, is also on the market.

Serbousek, 63, a professional diver who owns a combination dive shop and television-repair business in this Atlantic Coast community, is one of the pioneers of underwater archeology and paleontology in Florida.

He has been probing for fossils on the mud-and-rock bottoms of polluted rivers, lakes and sinkholes throughout the state for 30 years. Many of his finds are on display in museums and others are research subjects in the scientific community.

Serbousek now feels it is time to give permanent homes to his most prized possessions--the two rare specimens of the Pleistocene Era--preferably in large museums or private collections that would make them available to the public as well as researchers.

He has talked to a number of museum people about selling the skeletons, but so far has not come up with any definite offers.

What are such scientific treasures worth?

“Whatever someone is willing to pay for history,” shrugs Serbousek, adding that he is “considering six figures or higher.”

How he came into possession of two such valued specimens were well-reported stories in the 1970s. His achievements were written up in glowing terms.

The giant sloth is one of two virtually complete skeletons dug up in 1975 by Serbousek and fellow amateur explorers Roger Alexon and Steve Hartman. The recovery site was a waterlogged Daytona Beach sand pit that has been ranked in archeological importance with the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.

Clayton Ray of the Smithsonian Institution, Gordon Edmund of the Royal Museum of Ontario and other experts confirmed the significance of the find: Only a few such skeletons exist, and none are as complete.

The sloth, a herbivorous mammal that could stand on its hind feet, is considered the rarest prehistoric animal that ever lived in Florida.

Serbousek donated the first complete skeleton of a giant sloth to the tiny Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach. He kept the second skeleton.

And in exchange for its help in assembling, treating and mounting the recovered fossils, Edmund’s museum in Toronto got the remaining jackpot of bones from the rich graveyard.

After a community fund-raising effort, the Daytona Beach museum built a special dome-shaped addition to house its giant sloth, which is mounted to stand 14 feet tall. It has 1,300 skeletal elements.

The furry animal had long arms and 20-inch claws on its feet. Scientists estimate that it would have been more than 20 feet tall standing upright, able to outreach other herbivores such as elephants feeding on tall trees and shrubs.

That animal weighed about 5 tons.

“This is the largest sample representing this species”--known scientifically as Eremotherium mirabile --said Edmund, head of the department of vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The other sloth skeleton is as big as the museum specimen and lies in boxes in Serbousek’s house.

“Don’s skeleton is certainly one of the best preserved examples of its kind, comparable to those in the Smithsonian,” said Edmund, considered the leading authority in the field.

“A few other skeletons of Eremotherium are known, including one headless specimen in the geology museum in Colombia, a composite specimen in Rio de Janeiro and some unmounted material elsewhere in South and Central America,” he said.

The other animal on Serbousek’s auction block, the mastodon, was recovered from the murky, snake-filled Aucilla River in north Florida in 1968.

The well-preserved bones were “virtually in one unit,” Serbousek said. They were lying in a 23-foot hole on the river bottom. He and several other amateur divers using underwater lamps came upon the fossils. The animal was identifiable because of its lower jaw, which rested atop a pile of long leg bones.

Bringing the monster to the surface was a tough, tedious task. Team members made numerous dives and overcame many frustrations before the blue clay at the river bottom yielded its prize.

The laborious recovery process proved worthwhile because the mastodon, which they named Priscilla, is missing only its two left legs and a few foot bones. One of its tusks is 9 1/2 feet long. The other was broken off and is about 1 1/2 feet shorter.

Measurements of the shoulder blade and long leg bones help to place the estimated height of the animal at 10 1/2 feet at the shoulder, Serbousek said.

None of half a dozen experts in the field who were contacted knew of a bigger mastodon skeleton recovered on this continent.

“I have no doubt that it is among the contenders for some sort of major record, although scientific measurements would have to be made,” said Dr. David Webb, a paleontologist at the Florida State Museum in Gainesville who is familiar with the animal.

“There’s a lot of work that hasn’t been done on Priscilla yet, but it is quite extraordinary. It’s in the major leagues, right along with the best ones in New York and Chicago. It’s really big for a mastodon.”

Dr. Daniel Fisher of the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology, another researcher on mastodon skeletons, says there may be others that are more complete than Priscilla.

But, he adds, “My rough impression is that it might be 15% to 20% larger than the largest one I’m familiar with.”

Meanwhile, Serbousek is “copying” the mastodon bones--duplicating them in a lightweight plastic material from life-size molds made directly from the skeletal parts. He and a friend developed the plastic reproduction process several years ago.

Serbousek’s friends say that in addition to putting some money in the bank, the sale of Priscilla and the giant sloth would help bring him some recognition in a field that he loves but in which he never acquired the academic credentials necessary for prestige.

“Sometimes I think I’ve been rewarded just by working hard to recover the animals and then convincing others that these sites are of great value and importance,” he said.

“But sometimes I wonder whether that’s enough.”