OPC Outdoors goes back in time with prehistoric fossil trip






By John Davis
Community Relations Director

BLUE SPRINGS — Less than half a mile away from the location where one of man’s most modern inventions is manufactured, prehistoric fossils lie ready to be found by those willing to dig.  

In the shadow of the Toyota plant is a dug out pit that fossil and outdoor enthusiasts looking to learn about North Mississippi from 70 million years ago will enjoy immensely. 

The Coon Creek Formation runs through certain portions of Northeast Mississippi, and OPC Outdoors took young fossil collectors, and their parents, on a trip back in time.  

Thanks to the generous time granted by George Phillips, Paleontology Curator at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, trip explorers were able to extensively learn about the fossil bed located in Blue Springs, as well as actually get down in the dirt to retrieve and collect.  

Phillips told the participants that the fossil bed was first found in the late 1970s when road work between highways 178 and 78 was being completed. The first Blue Springs site was mined and studied by Dr. Gale Bishop of Georgia Southern. Phillips said over a dozen new species of crabs were found in the area. Not only were they new species to researchers here, but also new to researchers on a global scale.  

“He started exploring other parts of this area. There was a pond dug in the ‘60s and he found fossils along the pond,” Phillips said about Bishop’s work. “It wasn’t until 2006, 2007 when word got around that they were going to build the Toyota plant, we, those of us in geology, got out here as soon as the digging started. We monitored it for the next several years.” 

Ever since the exposure was uncovered during construction, the site has been visited by professionals, educators and those wanting to learn. 

“Over the last dozen years, people from all over the world have come here to collect the fossils in this unprecedented exposure of the Coon Creek Formation,” Phillips said. “Mississippi had never had an exposure of these fossil beds. For years, we were waiting on a public access to investigate this site. There are very few sites like this around the world. This is chock full of shells. The clay and sandy sediment here preserve such a great variety of things.” 

Blue Springs was one of two stops made during the excursion. Phillips first met the group at Flat Rock Church, a site near Hickory Flat. Some digging started before rain cancelled plans. There was enough time for Phillips to show the differences between sites. He told the class that the preservation of fossils has a lot to do with the chemistry of the surrounding area.  

“The area here (at Blue Springs) is a magical mixture, a Goldilocks mixture of sediments to preserve these fossils,” he said. “There are also a lot of diverse organisms, in this case marine organisms, that existed in a shallow bay. Pretend that you are looking at the sediment that is below the bottom of Mobile Bay. That’s the kind of things you will be finding out here. Lots of shells, shark teeth. On occasion we will find urchins. They are very rare.” 

Many of the items found during the fossil trip were oysters. Shellfish, crabs and lobsters also lived in the Mississippi Embayment 70 million years ago. Phillips told the participants that the shoreline during that time period would have been closer to Corinth or Tishomingo County. According to information provided through a website dedicated to geology, Coon Creek, which also includes parts of western Tennessee and Kentucky, eastern Arkansas, and even southeast Missouri, was much like southern Florida is now. That means semi-tropical temperatures, and waves from tropical storms like hurricanes churned up the shallow parts of the sea floor. The Blue Springs site would have been located in that shallower part of the thumb-print shaped bay.