I FREQUENTLY FIND FOSSILS WHILE HUNTING POINTS . . .
In our creekbeds, we find a lot of Cretaceous marine fauna and some Pleistocene stuff. I've made several nice finds over the years. Here are some of the better ones.
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THE FAMOUS GCS MOSASAUR SKULL
In October 1977, I took my seventh grade Texas History class on a field trip to the river to study Indian artifacts and fossils. The day was going pretty slowly when I saw this bad boy protruding from the shale in the bottom of the river. As you can imagine, I got a little excited! |
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After a little cleaning of the gravel,
it became apparent that the entire skull was there, upside down, with both lower mandibles detached and lying a few inches away. What a find! |
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The skull came out in pieces
so I had to carefully lift them out one by one, clean the matrix away, and wrap them - first in toilet tissue for padding, then in tinfoil to protect them. |
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FULLY RESTORED TO ITS ORIGINAL SHAPE
The skull sits in a glass case in the Elementary Wing of Greenville Christian School to this day. Again I have to say, What a find! |
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My biggest mosasaur vertebrae yet -
I found this on Jan. 24, 2001. The piece next to it is a partial upper jaw hinge, as long as my foot.
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A nice set of mosasaur vertebrae
I found this set of 27 tylosaurus tail vertebrae around Christmas 2000. Several of them still had the neural arches attached. Excuse the messy kitchen table! |
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THIS IS MY RAREST FOSSIL EVER. . .
It is the skull of a Pleistocene musk ox (Symbos cavifrons), recovered from the clay banks of the river in about 1991. Harold Finley and I found it, John Schultz excavated it, and today it resides in the Fort Worth Museum of Natural History. |
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