A couple of weeks ago I did a column on a bull shark being caught in the Tombigbee River in Alabama. In the column I mentioned fossil sharks teeth that are commonly found in the Upper Tombigbee River Valley. Around the same time an announcement was made about a proposed children’s museum in Columbus. Since then I have had a number of people ask about both fossils and museums.
While most people are aware of fossils that are found across this region, few realize that 177 years ago Columbus had a museum. It was a museum that contained what was then a very significant fossil collection and a world of other exhibits. On March 25, 1839, Dr. William Spillman announced he had just opened the “Columbus Museum” on Main Street. Admission was $1 for adults and 25 cents for children.
Spillman advertised a large collection of clothing and ornaments from New Zealand and the South Sea Islands. In addition, he said “in this collection are…near two thousand specimens – hip bone, and section of the largest Mastodon Tusk ever found, or at least that we have any account of; a great variety of fossils, Indian Antiquities…there is something in this museum to interest…and drive the melancholy from the hypochondriac.”
Seventy-five to 80 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, northeast Mississippi was covered by a vast inland sea. At a time when dinosaurs ruled the land, huge reptiles ruled the sea. The fossils of a type of mosasaur, a huge, 75-million-year-old, sea-going reptile, was found by Spillman, probably at Plymouth Bluff in 1869. It was an important new species that was illustrated in the publications of both the Smithsonian Institution and The Boston Society of Natural History.
Many of the fossils Spillman collected were found at Plymouth Bluff, just up river from Columbus, and at Barton’s Bluff, on the river east of West Point.
At Barton, he found a fossil bed so full of sharks teeth that he called the site the “Shark’s Defeat.”
Spillman also collected fossils across the Black Prairie and into Alabama. In the prairies he would have found, as can still be found, fossils from the Pleistocene and the ice age of eight to 30,000 years ago. It was in the Prairie that he probably found the huge mastodon tusk he had in his museum.
Though not trained as a geologist but as a physician and Methodist minister, Spillman was able to provide previously unknown fossils to some of the fathers of American paleontology. Several of his fossil finds are at the Smithsonian and are original fossil type specimens named after him. Included in the collections of the Smithsonian are fossils from Plymouth Bluff, one of Spillman’s favorite collecting locations.
Often I am asked of places that people can go, that are easily assessable, where one can walk and look through a window into history. This column started in a different direction but writing on a pretty day pulled me toward Plymouth Bluff. I first learned of Plymouth Bluff when I was about 10 years old being taken there many times by my father and my cousins Dr. Jack Kaye and Tom Hardy. Though the best fossil beds are obscured by vegetation, I still enjoy walking there as much as ever and have had the pleasure of introducing my grandchildren to its nature trails.
On a beautiful weekend such as we have had, it is a perfect time to visit the MUW Plymouth Bluff Center. There, one finds four miles of nature trails and a museum containing displays, including fossils of the ancient creatures that swam in the 7-million-year-old Cretaceous sea or roamed the 30,000-year-old ice age prairies once here. There is even the jaw of a Mastodon found in a creek near Tupelo by Dr. Kaye. Other exhibits there focus on Native Americans and the region’s wildlife. The Plymouth Bluff Center is located at 2200 Old West Point Road, Columbus, Mississippi, and additional information may be found at web3.muw.edu/plymouthbluff/.
Rufus Ward is a local historian. Email your questions about local history to him at [email protected].
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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