Following in the Footsteps of the Sauropod
Fossil hunting in the heart of Texas
Editor’s Note: This trip was hosted in part by the Greenville CVB, though the opinions of the writer are entirely her own.
“Look right here and tell me what you see,” said Morris Bussey, owner of the Stone Hut Fossil Shop in Glen Rose, Texas. My husband Paul, our three kids, and I formed a circle around a small area of dirt and rocks, and Bussey waited patiently while we gazed at the white rubble at our feet. It took a few minutes, but Paul finally lasered in on it—a small, but perfectly shaped ammonite, a coiled, shelled sea creature that went extinct 66 million years ago. Amazed at how Bussey spotted it within seconds, I asked what the trick was. He grinned. “You see rocks when you look at the ground, but I see only fossils.”
Fossils brought us to this part of Texas. We’d heard the rumors—that on the outskirts of Dallas, far from the Gulf of Mexico, shark teeth emerge from the rivers, extinct oysters and clams tumble from the ground’s surface, and dinosaur footprints remain frozen in time. Curiosity piqued, we set out on an epic road trip to discover exactly what stories are hidden beneath this dirt.
Austin
We began our journey in Austin. Around a hundred million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, the state’s capitol—along with most of Texas—was covered by the Western Interior Seaway, a shallow sea that ran from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. The sea was home to a variety of aquatic creatures, from the terrifying mosasaur known as the “T-Rex of the Sea” to ammonites, ancient snails, and sea urchins. Along the edge of the water, giant, long-necked sauropod and three-toed theropod dinosaurs roamed the land.
Scanning online fossil forums, we got a tip to set our sights on Shoal Creek, a stream running south through the city. While fossils abound across the state, they’re most easily found where roadcuts or streams have exposed underlayers of land. Pease Park offers easy access to the creek and the water-worn gravel beside it. Within minutes, Paul plucked a bison tooth from the water’s edge. Although not fossilized, it was a significant find—bison haven’t lived in this area since before 1870. Looking closer at the shells surrounding it, we realized we’d hit the jackpot in fossilized oysters. Dating back a hundred million years, the small, hook-shaped fossils were littered across the ground, and we spent the day collecting our favorites.
Glen Rose
Next up was Glen Rose, famous for its dinosaur footprints in the Paluxy River at Dinosaur Valley State Park. 113 million years ago, dinosaurs walked through the mud here on the edge of the ancient sea, and the tracks hardened and were covered over. A flood in 1908 washed the area clean, and a nine-year-old boy discovered the tracks shortly after. Our favorite spot was the ballroom site, where we waded through the river and stood in a sauropod’s saucer-shaped prints. Weaving around it were the records of a three-toed carnivore who might have pursued this plant eater.
Leaving the state park, we pulled into Bussey’s Stone Hut Fossil Shop. A Houma native, Bussey opened the shop in 2008 and offers a wide variety of fossils from both the local area and around the world. Ecstatic to meet fellow Louisianans, he played us some Boudreaux and Thibodeaux comedy tapes before escorting us outside to see his breathtaking pieces of petrified wood, most found just down the road in Glen Rose. Petrified wood is so abundant in the town that in the 1920s, entire buildings were constructed of the material, and around four dozen can still be seen today.
After exploring his shop and buying our own souvenirs, we followed Bussey to a nearby roadcut where he instructed us in the art of fossil-finding. Gazing out at the hillside, he gestured to where water had run off down the side, explaining we had the best chance of finding something there in the wash. He advised us to look for odd shapes, things that didn’t fit in, and after pointing out several more fossilized pieces, he left us there digging in the dirt—scooping out ancient snails, oysters, and shells.
Mineral Wells Fossil Park
West of Fort Worth, Mineral Wells Fossil Park beckons visitors to travel back 300 million years. A former landfill borrow pit that closed in the early 1990s, the dusty, dry land has continued to erode—revealing a wealth of fossils beneath its surface. Today, the free park allows hunters to come explore and take anything they find.
We descended into the pit, and each went our separate ways, scanning the ground as we walked. It wasn’t long before we found deposits of the site’s most plentiful specimens—small, tube-shaped crinoids. Similar in appearance to the stem of old clay pipes, crinoids feature the addition of concentric rings running up their sides. These plant-like structures look like ancient sea lilies, but were actually animals with arms that allowed them to crawl and swim. They were our main find of the day, but other lucky hunters have gone home with echinoids (urchins), clams and oysters, corals, trilobites (the first multiple-celled animal to exist on earth), and even primitive shark teeth.
Greenville, Sherman, and Sulphur River
From Mineral Wells, we circled the metropolis of Dallas-Fort Worth and steered northeast to Greenville and the Lofts on Lee, our home base for the last leg of our adventure. Greenville was once a bustling cotton town, and the main road is still home to many historic buildings. Robert Hall and his wife, Sherry, have helped drive a renaissance of the town’s historic district, transforming a hundred-year-old building into elegant, themed suites and opening the bustling Prairie Coffee Co. next door. We traded in our dirt-clogged boots for pure luxury in the Downton Abbey suite, where old English style meets modern amenities complete with a walk-in shower I never wanted to leave. At the bar and grill, The Ashen Rose, we filled up on fried mac and cheese bites and sliders before crossing the street for chili-laced ice cream at La Sabrosita Fruteria and Neveria. On the walk back, we stopped in Landon Winery for a bottle of their top selling sweet white, Yellow Rose.
The next morning, we drove an hour northwest to the tiny town of Sherman, where shark teeth collectors descend on Post Oak Creek. Armed with makeshift sifters, we picked our way under the bridge and waded into the small, shaded stream. Randomly choosing a spot, we started shoveling sand into our screens. Within minutes, we found our first shark tooth of the trip—estimated to be a hundred million years old. The discovery electrified the kids, and they rapidly began digging. At the end of the day, we were exhausted, but our pockets were filled with over a hundred of the dime-sized teeth.
Our final two days were reserved for the Sulphur River, just northeast of Greenville. Two veteran collectors, Debbie McClain and Jennifer Pittsinger, offered to show us the ropes, and McClain brought her extensive collection to illustrate what we could find down below. Mosasaur teeth and vertebrates are the hot ticket items here, as well as projectile points left behind by the Caddo people who lived here until the 17th century.
[Read this: Mississippi's Petrified Forest—A foray into all things fossilized in Flora]
They warned us to bring mud boots and walking sticks, which came in handy while we squelched and slid our way down the embankment to the riverbed. The ladies’ hunting strategies differed. McClain walked a straight line down the banks of the river, collecting both steps and artifacts along the way. Pittsinger picked an area and zig-zagged her way back and forth over every inch of it. Both were successful, filling their palms with sharks’ teeth and arrowheads within minutes. Paul, who either had a better eye or more luck than the rest of our family, found the coveted mosasaur tooth, but I also came away with one of the grey-flecked mosasaur vertebrae.
The afternoon was spent walking the streets of Greenville, stopping in the Uptown Forum mall to view jewelry at The Creative Spot Gallery & Gifts, handmade candles at Lenore Cole, and fudge at Cheesebrough & Campbell Specialty Chocolates. We peered in the windows of the historic Texan Theater, which recently underwent a multi-million-dollar renovation; read about the town’s most famous resident, Audie Murphy—World War II’s most decorated hero; and popped in the heavenly scented D. Sherell Soaps & More.
Day two on the Sulphur, after an arduous climb down the steep canyon side, we met Lewis Smith, better known as “Indiana” Smith on his fossil-hunting YouTube channel. After searching the local area for thirty-seven years, he’s amassed a collection of over nine thousand Indigenous relics and countless fossils.
“You never know what you’ll find,” said Smith. “There are Clovis points that are thirteen thousand years old. The prehistoric people used them to hunt mammoths. If you find the Ice Age bones, from mammoths, mastadons, and giant ground sloths, they will fall apart. The older Cretaceous bones are petrified and harder. They’re now stones, just a memory of the bone.”
[Planning a trip to Texas? Here are some of our favorite travel guides—to the Hill Country, to Marble Falls, to Marfa, and to San Antonio.]
He advised us that the river sorts rocks, fossils, and artifacts by size, so to find shark’s teeth, we should search banks made up of small gravel, and for arrowheads, slightly larger gravel. With that in mind, we went to work. Our persistence paid off in the form of baculites (straight-shelled ammonites), intricate worm castings (the fossilized trails of worms burrowing through mud), and more mosasaur vertebrates.
The trip left us wanting to plan our next foray back in time. Our ancient finds now adorn our house, serving as reminders of a very different world that existed long ago.