It’s springtime and my favorite time of the year. Last week I wrote about the flowers of spring, and this week I will look at something I enjoy seeing even more than flowers: fossils.
The streams and outcroppings around Columbus, Starkville and West Point contain fossils of plants and creatures from the Pleistocene period of about 8,000 to 35,000 years ago and the Upper Cretaceous of about 66 to 90 million years ago.
Pleistocene fossils can be found in the very dark soil found on top of the chalk in Black Prairie creeks. The fossils can be in the dark soil or washed out of it into the creeks. Among the fossils I have found are teeth or bones of a giant ground sloth, American zebra, buffalo, camel, mastodon and mammoth. These fossils suggest that the Black Prairie of 20,000 years ago would have resembled a modern-day savanna in Africa.
The Cretaceous fossils are found in the chalk so common in the prairie and in the grayish hard sand found along the banks of the Tombigbee and Luxapalila. The chalk and sand are remnants of a great inland sea in which the present sites of Jackson and Midnight (in the Delta) were volcanic islands. The most common Cretaceous fossils are marine fossils such as shells, crabs, fish vertebrae, shark teeth and marine reptiles such as mosasaurs and turtles.
There are several beds of hard gray and brown sand along the Luxapalila’s banks that contain a wide array of 83 million year old fossils. According to The Geology of Mississippi by Dockery and Thompson, University Press of Mississippi, MDEQ, 2016, ”The banks of the creek in Columbus have produced a greater number of dinosaur remains than any other site in the state.” George Phillips, paleontologist at the Mississippi Museum of Natural History, has collected fossils of several dinosaurs along the creek. Shark, sawfish, ray and saber-toothed fish teeth are very common in several places along the creek bank. Other fossils found there include mosasaur, plesiosaur, turtle, crocodile and two raptor dinosaur teeth.
Sites along the creek provide a fascinating window into life here 83 million years ago. Other places have developed fossil parks that both attract visitors and provide a fun educational setting for young and old. There is a fossil park at Frankstown about 10 miles north of Tupelo. The idea of such a park has been discussed in Columbus since 2016 but with little headway.
Last September I helped Nancy Carpenter and Visit Columbus show our town to a German travel writer who was on a tour of Mississippi. I found his comments about Columbus and what appealed to him as a tourism asset most interesting. It was the walkways, historic vistas and slices of natural history that surround downtown or are only a short drive away. Our guest from Germany, who writes for newspapers with a circulation of 700,000, was amazed at how many different places for walking and exploring and being immersed in history, nature and architecture were so close by.
He said Columbus provided a wonderful venue to experience impressive historic architecture and natural history all near an attractive downtown with good restaurants.
Two hundred-fifty years ago another visitor from overseas passed through here. In 1771, British surveyor Bernard Romans descended the Tombigbee River and passed Plymouth Bluff. He wrote a lengthy description of the bluff, which he called “a very remarkable bluff.” He concluded by saying, “it looks as if made by art, and if placed near any town of note, I do not doubt would be much used as a walk.” That night he made camp at the mouth of the Luxapalila.
Plymouth Bluff was a fabulous fossil collecting site but most of its fossil-containing beds are lost due to vegetation that has grown up since the river current no longer cleans its fossil-bearing shelf. However, the MUW Center there does have a museum exhibiting an excellent display of local fossils. That museum could be a nearby resource to complement a fossil park.
The mayor has suggested that if a fossil park were on the Luxapalila, possibly at Propst Park, and included a canoe and kayak run on the creek then Columbus would offer a unique blend of cultural and natural history that would be unrivaled in the region. The beauty of the idea is that it would be an inexpensive project with great potential. What we already have in Columbus really impressed a travel writer from Germany. With a little effort and not a lot of expense, think about what Columbus would then have to offer tourists and residents alike.
Rufus Ward is a local historian.
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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