Before he was curating fossils at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, George Phillips was a boy searching for rocks on his family farm a couple miles east of Artesia.
Phillips had no idea at the time that the land around him – part of the Mississippi Black Belt – had a unique geologic history. His own fascination was sparked by a farmhand who would go rockhounding on the land.
“He’d go do that during his break time, around lunch and quitting time. He’d wander off into the field or into the creek beds, and then just go look for rocks,” Phillips said. “I asked to go one day – I guess I was around 10 or 11 – and that’s how it started.”
By the time he was 12, Phillips’ casual curiosity was growing into a dedicated pursuit. He began to seek out books and professionals to better understand the fossils he was finding.
“I accumulated lots of books. I accumulated lots of fossils,” he said. “Back then, you would send them off to have them identified and then after several months, they would send them back.”
He eventually connected with Jack Kaye, a former geology professor at Mississippi State University, who would become a mentor to Phillips. Kaye introduced Phillips to a wider network of fossil enthusiasts and professionals.
While at Mississippi State University working on his bachelor’s degree in biology and geology, Phillips found more like-minded fossil folks.
“I’d go over there and hang out in the labs, and I became really interested in fossils, particularly identifying bones by hanging out in the labs there as they were going through bones from archaeological sites,” he said.
He graduated from MSU and left the state to work on a master’s degree in geology at North Carolina State University while conducting research and working part-time at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
Then, Phillips got a call offering the job at MMNS in Jackson, and with few paleontology jobs available at the time, it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.
“I was the first person offered a full-time job out of that program, in or around … paleontology,” he said. “Jobs in paleontology were scarce.”
Phillips started the job in 2003, and has been there since, with every day different from the last, whether he’s working with a fossil collection, building new storage cabinets or cataloging specimens.
Fostering public interest
As he was learning more about the field, Phillips remembers writing a lot of letters to paleontologists and other fossil experts who were happy to help an interested individual. Now, public interest around fossil hunting and collecting has grown so much, he said, it’s hard to get around to helping amateurs who reach out to him.
“The interest in fossils and fossil collecting is so enormous and overwhelming that I can only respond to a fraction of all the correspondence,” he said. “It seems like back when I was young and I was reaching out, almost everyone obliged me that I encountered. I was never turned away.”
Capitalizing on that growing interest, Phillips tries to keep the region’s geologic history from being forgotten. Right now, he’s working with city officials to help develop a fossil park along the Luxapalila Creek at Propst Park. The project aims to shed some light on the area’s geologic history while also giving visitors a chance to hunt for the fossils themselves.
Local historian Rufus Ward first began floating the idea for the park in 2016. He said Phillips has been instrumental in bringing the idea into reality, both by offering expertise and building public enthusiasm.
“In all of that, George was a moving force in spreading the word among professionals while identifying fossils for young people to encourage their interest in science and nature,” Ward wrote in a text to The Dispatch.
Returning to Columbus this week for a special lecture, Phillips will be focusing on a different geologic marvel of Lowndes County. Starting at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, he will present “The Geologic History of Plymouth Bluff” at the Plymouth Bluff Environmental Center.
The 190-acre educational and recreational facility, Phillips said, has a very fascinating and revealing geologic history that brought researchers from across the world to the bluff.
“Scientists came from the eastern Atlantic, from England and France and other places in Europe to study our Plymouth Bluff … and to make samples,” he said. “I spoke to an Englishman about 10 years ago who sent us some fossils that he found in the bluff that we didn’t have good examples of in the collection, which was wonderful.
Phillips said his hope is to return some of that curiosity about Plymouth Bluff to the audience.
“I hope to get the public really interested in the geologic history of that bluff,” he said.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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