Eighty-five million years ago, sharks swam where Gardner Boulevard is now. Carnivorous raptors roamed nearby beaches. Ten-foot-long crocodiles thrashed about.
Let that sink in for a minute, and then I want to tell you about something Rufus Ward has in mind.
All through that area in east Columbus, especially along the banks of Luxapalila Creek, there is abundant evidence of prehistoric life from the Late Cretaceous Period: sharks’ teeth, dinosaur bones, mollusks.
Rufus would like to see a fossil park along the Luxapalila where these fossils are accessible. He thinks it would be a quality of life enhancement, and a good thing to have on your list of community assets at a BRAC hearing.
To that end, Rufus invited his friend George Phillips up from the Mississippi Museum of Natural Sciences in Jackson on Friday. Phillips is the paleontology curator at the museum. He’s been interested in fossils and ancient artifacts since he was 12 years old.
Phillips, 49, grew up in Columbus; his dad was the late woodsman, farmer and chef, Ed Phillips.
After lunch at John’s United Deli, George, Rufus and I went to the banks of the Lux.
In his 1955 masters thesis at Mississippi State University, Jack Kaye, who would teach geology at the school and at The W, wrote about the existence of shark teeth in this area, Phillips said.
Then in 1996, along comes piano teacher Eric Loftis walking his dog on a service road near the banks of the Lux. In some of the spoil piles created by the creek’s channelization, Eric finds dinosaur fossils.
“Eric found what is the richest and most prolific and diverse dinosaur fossil site in Mississippi,” Phillips said.
The idea, as Rufus sees it, would be the creation of a state park with state park signage and info kiosks, and the city or county would keep the grass cut. At this point, it’s little more than a good idea.
Other states have parks where the public can dig for fossils. The closest such facility to us is the W. M. Browning Cretaceous Fossil Park north of Tupelo near Baldwyn.
After our brief walkabout, Rufus and George retrieved their mud boots and returned to the creek. About two hours later they showed up at The Dispatch muddy, smiling and with a small ziploc of treasures: 20 teeth from three different types of sharks and three pieces of coprolite (petrified crocodile feces).
Phillips described the sharks: “This one was a crustacean eater,” he said, holding a small T-shaped tooth between two fingers. Another group of teeth came from a type of goblin shark (Goblin sharks date back 125 million years and are existent today, though rare.). The third group of shark teeth came from a crow shark, which had teeth that were like serrations on a steak knife. “They were carnivorous,” Phillips said. “We find their teeth marks on the bones of sea turtles.”
Phillips said he got interested in fossils while he was a kid helping his dad on the farm.
Ed Phillips grew soybeans on Gilmer-Wilburn Road. George and his brother, Joey, were responsible for keeping the planter filled with seeds. Between fillings they would nap on seed bags under a shade tree. Another farm hand, Charles “Soul” James, spent his downtime rock hunting in ditches.
“He would pick up anything,” Phillips said. “Soul always had a pocketful of treasures he would share with us.”
When Soul started finding fossils during their breaks, George and Joey quit taking naps. They became rock hounds, too.
Soul, who lived in the nearby Hill City community, took the Phillips brothers to a prairie creek to look for Indian artifacts.
George has been trolling ditches, creek banks and chalk outcroppings since. When asked to explain his lifelong interest in prehistoric life, he is quick with an answer.
“It’s the past. The uncertainty of it, the mystique,” he said. “They (prehistoric animals) are almost fictional, but they lived on the earth. They inspire kids to learn about science.”
On the subject of kids learning science, Phillips had more to say:
“In Mississippi kids are introduced to the study of natural science doing three things: hunting/fishing, collecting insects and rock hunting.
“I don’t know a single biologist at the museum who didn’t grow up fishing.”
Birney Imes is the publisher of The Dispatch. Email him at [email protected].
George Phillips can be reached by email at [email protected]. His phone number at the museum is (601) 576-6063.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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