STARKVILLE — James Starnes was walking along a creek last month, field-checking a geological map of an area between the city and the Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee Wildlife Refuge and looking for fossilized seashells, when he saw a bone sticking out of the ground.

Starnes, the director of the surface geology division for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, almost immediately assumed it was from some kind of large animal. But it wasn’t until his colleague Jonathan Leard uncovered the fossil that they realized they had found part of a giant marine lizard, or “sea dragon,” from the late Cretaceous period.

“I knew it was bone,” Starnes said. “But I didn’t know it was a mosasaur until he pulled it out.”

When the Cretaceous period ended about 66 million years ago, Mississippi was covered with a warm, shallow sea, which was full of creatures that are now extinct. At the time, dinosaurs like the tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops dominated on land, but the sea had its own hierarchy, Starnes said.

“The oceans were also full of predators as well, and these mosasaurs were the apex predator,” he said.

Mosasaurs had a snakelike body with limbs modified into paddles and a long, slightly downcurved tail region. They hunted with large jaws and cone-shaped teeth. Their skulls were structured similarly to modern monitor lizards, and their backbones consisted of more than 100 vertebrae, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Like modern alligators and lizards, Starnes said, mosasaurs did not reach a “determinate size,” instead continuing to grow until they died. The largest species of mosasaur, the mosasaurus hoffmanni, Starnes said, is theorized to have grown up to 50 feet long and likely weighed more than 20,000 pounds.

The bone Starnes found was a lumbar vertebra, which he said is “diagnostic,” because it would have been one of the largest in the animal’s spine. With it being about seven inches wide at its largest, Starnes said the creature he found was likely more than 30 feet long.

“This hands down was the biggest mosasaur vertebra I’ve ever seen in my life,” Starnes said.

After discovering the vertebra, Starnes sent the fossil to the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.

George Phillips, paleontology curator for the museum, said finding a mosasaur vertebra in the Golden Triangle is fairly common, since the creatures had many vertebrae in their bodies and they were abundant in the sea. But the size of the vertebra Starnes discovered makes Phillips believe the creature was a mosasaurus hoffmanni, which is much less common of a find.

“This one is a particularly large one,” Phillips said. “This one is suggestive of … the maximum size for these individuals.”

The vertebra represents one of the largest mosasaurus hoffmanni ever recorded in the state, according to a release from MDEQ.

Starnes previously discovered another mosasaur specimen in the Golden Triangle a similar incident in 2022, he said, though it was a much smaller and older fossil. The more recent find, he said, existed nearer to the “horizon” line that geologically indicates the worldwide extinction of the dinosaurs, caused by a large meteorite hitting the earth.

“This animal lived literally during the last days of the dinosaurs, because at the top of this geological formation that we’re mapping, that is the end of the Cretaceous,” Starnes said. “And the layer that sits above that, there’s no more dinosaurs. And we find that worldwide.”

Future of the mosasaur fossil

For the sake of his work geologically surveying areas throughout the state, Starnes said, seashell fossils are the most helpful, since they are the most abundant and can help geologists date how far back in time they are looking at different depths.

Still, running into the bones of big animals is always exciting, he said.

“We were out looking for fossils, but sometimes we run across things that are a little more curious,” Starnes said. “Things of big animals. Those are things that don’t preserve all that commonly, as the seashells do. And those things are important to us as well, because they tell us the story of other things that were living in the ocean at the time.”

Starnes said he hopes the vertebra can be used by mosasaur researchers in the future, and a part of future publications on the species, as well as included on his geological map.

Phillips said though Starnes’ discovery may not necessarily be displayed at the museum, it will join the museum’s repository, which includes 97,000 fossils. The repository acts as a library for vouchers – specimens stored with all their associated data – which become an official record, Phillips said. Members of the scientific community can then request to use those vouchers when conducting research that eventually may be included in publications.

“Just because we don’t put it out on display with neon lights overhead doesn’t mean it’s not important,” Phillips said.

Phillips said the repository makes specimens available for researchers throughout the country and worldwide, and it does not just leave fossils sitting in drawers. At any point in time, Phillips said, 15-20% of the collection is being worked on in some way.

While Starnes was excited for his find, he also said the Golden Triangle is a particularly rich region for fossil hunting. With a growing interest in fossil hunting on the rise, he encouraged others to get out and look for pieces of history themselves.

“If people are interested in fossil collecting, there is not a place in the Starkville area that you can’t pick up a rock and throw it, and once you find that rock, you find a fossil,” Starnes said. “There are fossils everywhere in the Starkville area.”

If a citizen discovers a fossil of particular interest, Starnes said, they can reach out through MDEQ’s Ask a Geologist website for help identifying it. For more information visit mdeq.ms.gov/geology/ask-a-geologist.

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