Spitzer 24micron Observations of Optical/Near-IR Selected Extremely Red Galaxies: Evidence for Assembly of Massive Galaxies at z~1-2 ?

We carried out the direct measurement of the fraction of dusty sources in a sample of extremely red galaxies with (R - Ks) > 5.3mag and Ks 1, and an order of magnitude too red to be explained by an infrared quiescent spiral or a pure old stellar population at any redshift. Keck optical spectroscopy of a sample of similarly selected EROs in the FLS field suggests that most of the EROs in ELAIS N1 are probably at z~1. The mean 24um flux (167uJy) of the 24um-detected ERO sample roughly corresponds to the total infrared luminosity of (3-10)x10^(11)Lsun at z=1-1.5, which is similar to that of local LIRGs and ULIGs. The corresponding SFR is ~(50-170)Msun/yr. If the time scale of this starbursting phase is on the order of 10^8yr as inferred for the local LIRGs and ULIGs, the lower limit on the masses of these 24um-detected EROs is (5-20)x10^9Msun. It is plausible that some of the starburst EROs are in the midst of violent transformation to become massive early type galaxies at the epoch of z ~ 1-2