RUSKIN, Fla. (AP) -- After several decades spent digging in a phospate pit, Frank Garcia finally emerged with a treasure that will go down in history.

The paleontologist recently that his discovery of a small manatee-like creature is an official species. It took decades and about 70 fossil pieces for Garcia to put together the long-extinct Nanosiren garciae. The fossils will now be displayed at Smithsonian Institution and the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Garcia first found some of the animal's bones in deep pits dug by a phosphate mining company in the 1960s. He continued searching the area, gathering bone fragments from pits in Polk and Hardee counties, sending them to the Smithsonian Institution.