Work to make the Dr. John “Jack” Kaye Cretaceous Fossil Park at Propst Park a reality has begun, and already it is making news.
Last week Steve Zuppa, who has been helping with the park development, was in town with his son. The Luxapalila was low, and they were looking in the creek bed and gravel when they spotted a bone. It turned out to be the vertebra from a theropod dinosaur. George Phillips, curator of paleontology at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, identified it as from the tail of either a tyrannosaur or an ostrich mimic dinosaur. Steve is giving the fossil to the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.
A window on an ancient landscape is opening. However, the association of Columbus with ancient landscapes is not new. Local fossils have been attracting attention since 1839 when Dr. William Spillman opened the “Columbus Museum” on Main Street and advertised his collection, including many fossils. Among his discoveries were mosasaurs at Plymouth Bluff, and mosasaur teeth are found in the Luxapalila. The recent finding of a dinosaur bone also brings Dr. Spillman to mind as he was the first to discover and identify dinosaur bones in Mississippi.
Dr. William Spillman (1806-1886) was the classic Victorian example of “a man for all seasons.” He was a druggist, a physician, a Methodist minister and a member of the prestigious Academy of Natural Science of Philadelphia.
Though not trained as a geologist or paleontologist, he provided previously unknown fossils from Mississippi and Alabama to some of the fathers of American paleontology. Several original fossil type specimens in the Smithsonian were found by or named for him. By 1855 he was providing the Smithsonian with specimens of fish, reptiles and shells, and he discovered the first dinosaur bones found in Mississippi. Those bones probably came from Plymouth Bluff on the Tombigbee. It was said of him that: “He could see God in all things, even in all His creation.”
I’ve written about Spillman before and a reference to a mastodon tusk in his museum. I was wondering where the remains of the mastodon might have been found and recalled an article he had written for the Columbus Democrat in 1838 about a “Mastodon Cave” near Tuscumbia, Alabama. Spillman visited the cave at least twice in 1838, and his article is a vivid description of a different type of ancient landscape. It may also explain where the mastodon tusk in his Columbus museum came from.
In his account he described descending into the cavern “through scraggy limestone rocks.
“This aperture is of an oblong shape, averaging three by six feet, and leads through the upper ceiling of a large grotto, 45 feet above the floor, making 90 feet from the exterior opening to the floor of the cave. The grotto is about 500 feet in circumference, and from 45 to 50 feet high.
“A little east of the aperture there are two stalagmite pillars, named Jacan and Boaz, the largest of which is upwards of 20 feet in circumference at the base, and 10 or 12 feet high; they gradually tapering as they ascend, and are fluted in a manner that art can never excel. Around each of these pillars the floor is carpeted with botryoidal concretions, formed by the drippings of the cave, while over them hang, in a graceful style, several festoon stalactites. At the south side of this grotto there is a pool of pure water, marked in the cut about 6 or 8 feet in diameter, and 2 or 3 feet deep. This pool is defended by an embankment of clay and gravel, with an exterior coating of calcareous earth.
“(There) are small avenues leading into the cavern, which is in some places 10 or 12 feet wide, and 15 or 20 high. In the centre of this grotto, there is an aperture about 8 feet in diameter, descending obliquely 12 or 14 feet, into another department. This apartment is about the size of a common parlor, which may be appropriately called the Turkey Pen, from the circumstances of finding there some turkey bones, covered with crystallized carbonate of lime.
“From the aperture, the cave continues west, from 60 to 100 feet wide, and from 20 to 80 high. 950 feet from the aperture there is a division formed in this channel by the rocks and earth falling in from above. This division may appropriately be called the Mammoth’s Defeat from the circumstance of finding some very large bones at that place; part of one tusk has been procured, that measured 21 1/2 inches in circumference. A part of the under jaw bone, and some of the molar teeth have also been found, which prove the animal to have been a herbivorous one; which fact, together with the circumstance of a sink in the earth immediately above that place, show how those bones found their was to so great a depth in the earth. – The most rational idea is, that this huge animal, in taking one of his ‘Indian leaps over the hills,’ happened to set his pedestals down too heave on that place and he sunk to rise no more.
“The west end of this cave, which is 1,284 feet from the aperture, terminates in an oval grotto, which is 231 feet in diameter, but not so lofty. According to its size, as other parts of the cave. This grotto has been named the Chapel. The upper ceiling of the Chapel is beautifully decorated with round and festoon stalactites, and many parts of the floor carpeted with crystallizations, of almost every color and form; parts of which are of a smooth and glassy appearance, while other places are cast up in spray figures, resembling a boisterous ocean in miniature. The white Stalagmites around the sides of Chapel, when but dimly lighted, present to the beholder’s eye the appearance of the steeples of a city, when viewed from a great distance.”
Spillman went on in a lengthy description describing “chrystals beautiful as diamonds set in the richest pearl” and “comparable in grandeur to nothing but the falling meteors of 1833.” He later returned to the cavern and found some of its most beautiful structures “mutilated and almost entirely destroyed.”
As to the contents of Dr. Spillman’s museum, I saw a reference that they had been acquired by the Columbus Female Institute, which became Mississippi University for Women. One can’t help but wonder if packed in boxes forgotten and lost in an attic somewhere on campus is a collection of priceless fossils and artifacts from 185 years ago.
Thanks to Carolyn Kaye for transcribing Spillman’s lengthy 1838 newspaper article.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 30 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 30 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
