SCIENCE AND HISTORY

Seal Press Collector

. . . . . .Cox Robert Crider

    This is a low resolution image of some of my arrowheads.  These all came from Limestone County, Texas.  They were found by my Dad and me in my boyhood days when much of the land here was farmed.  We would go out after rains and look for arrowheads exposed in freshly plowed soil.  It has been about 40 years since I have found an arrowhead......the land here is no longer plowed for crops but has reverted to range land for cattle.

  The broken arrowhead in the middle of the photo above was found by me on the family ranch near Personville (now a ghost town) Texas.  I was a teenager at the time and found each piece....two years apart!!!!!!!!!! 

    Above are some more arrowheads.   More about them later.............

    To the left is a picture of me showing my grandson, Boone, some exposures at a mammoth excavation site where I served as a volunteer digger this summer.  Although mammoths did not recognize political boundaries, it is the only one found in Limestone  County (so far).  It is special to me because it is only about a 1/4 mile from my great-grandfather's blackland farm where I hunted arrowheads in my youth.  By the way, I don't usually walk with a cane, but I was "down in my back" on picture day! 

The story of Murphy the mammoth:

from "The Mexia Daily News" :

Elizabeth Withrow has a weekly article that she writes for the Mexia Daily News.  She asked me to write an article on the Mammoth Dig.  The following is her article.

"MAMMOTH" UNDERTAKING BEGINS IN LIMESTONE

Through the grapevine I heard that Bob Crider was working at a 'dig'.  The remains of a mammoth had been discovered in Limestone County where it had been entombed for 10,000-15,000 years.  I was agog with questions.

E.W. - Bob, How did you find out about it?

BOB - "My daughter, Sunday, heard about the mammoth dig when she was living in Dallas (they have moved to Boston now).  The Dallas Paleontological Society was in charge of recruiting volunteer diggers, so I joined and became one of the volunteers.  On Aug. 24, we are going to remove the scapula which has been prepared with a plaster cast.  The other bones which have been partially exposed will be covered with a tarp and then covered with soil to protect them until next year.  The dig will require a minimum of two more summers and then years of preparing the bones after that.  It moves especially slowly since it is all volunteer work with no financial support."

E.W. - "Can you write the story for my readers?" (Because of the enormity of the find, it is very hush-hush.)

BOB - "I have permission from the dig leader, Tom Vance of Corsicana, to release information about the dig.  I am not at liberty at this time to release the exact location.  So here is a little story I wrote for you about the mammoth adventure."

PART 1:  It is fascinating to imagine what the prairies between Mexia and Waco looked like near the end of the Ice Age about 10,000-15,000 years ago; perhaps a tall grass prairie at that time.  The area was well-stocked with the large mammals that were characteristic of the Pleistocene Epoch.  Of all these creatures of the past, the master of the scene was the mighty mammoth.  No other animal dared to prey on the mammoth except for humans who were new arrivals on the prairie.

The mammoth of this prairie was not the familiar woolly mammoth of the frozen North but an even larger one known as the Mammuthus columbii, or the Columbian mammoth, looked more like a modern Asian elephant.  A hundred centuries ago they populated the prairie west of Mexia by the thousands.  A few left behind their bones to tantalize our intellects and leave pictured in our mind's eye a glimpse of their ancient world.

Five years ago two men looking for Indian relics found a piece of a very large bone protruding from a creek bank.  Realizing that this bone was out of the ordinary, they took it to Tom Vance at Navarro College.  He immediately recognized it as the 'head' of a mammoth femur and began to investigate the site.  Finding a large mammoth molar just a few yards downstream from where the femur was found, he knew that the site had potential and that he must organize a scientifically conducted excavation.

Conducting a scientific excavation, or dig as it is usually called, is a daunting task.  The field work can only be conducted during the dry season when it is hot and uncomfortable.  Thousands of hours of labor would be necessary and since there were no budgeted funds to conduct the dig, all the labor must be contributed by volunteers.  Could it be done?

Tom enlisted the aid of the Dallas Paleontological Society as a source for volunteers and the digging began.  During the first and second summers of excavation, the pelvis, the lower jaw, and one tusk were exposed.  The jaw had one tooth embedded, but unfortunately the tooth was stolen by vandals who also damaged the jaw beyond repair.  For the naturalist, it is sad for such a treasure to be destroyed by uncaring persons seeking a few dollars.  The tooth was the only part of the mammoth that could be easily converted to cash.  The remainder of the bones and the tusk  are in such poor condition that it takes painstaking procedures to extract them from the earth.

PART 2:  More and more bones are being discovered as the dig proceeds. During the current dig, vertebrae, ribs, femur, scapular, and other bones have been unearthed.

It is likely that a large portion of the mammoth skeleton lies beneath the sediment waiting to be uncovered.  At least two more dig seasons will be required to explore the entire site.  After all the bones have been extracted from the site, several years of preparation work will be necessary to stabilize the bones.

Ultimately the only mammoth skeleton from Limestone County will be displayed at the Fort Parker Visitor's Center.  Murphy, as we have come to call the mammoth, will have a new home and serve as an educational exhibit for futurre generations.  He will be a silent monument to the time before Man came to the prairie.

E.W. Bob, I would like to know more about your day's work - how do you go about the process of uncovering the bones? --what time do you get there?  how does a person volunteer? - what are the reequirements to be a volunteer? --is there any fun in the work?

BOB - "The digging usually just happened on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  I usually went before 7AM on Friday and Saturday only.  The out-of-town volunteers usually arrived about 9.  Work would progress until about 1:30 PM; after that it is too hot!  Just working in the morning required plenty of water intake to keep hydrated.  Officially, there was a requirement to be a member of the Dallas Paleontological Society to be a volunteer digger.  Shovels and mattocks were used to get down to the bone layer (about 17 feet); after that it was dental tools.  The bone is very fragile and moist, having laid in a clay layer which has not dried out in millennia.  The work is not at all fun unless one is interested in it.  If one is interested in it, then it becomes a mission instead of work.  After all, when you reveal a piece of bone, it is something no man or woman has ever seen before."

Shortly after this article appeared in the local newspaper, a reporter from the Waco Tribune-Herald contacted me.  She had seen the article and wanted to write one for her paper.  I told her what I could and recommended she contact Tom Vance, which she did.  As a result, a lengthy article was printed on page 1 of the Tribune-Herald on Nov 3, 2002.  The Associated Press picked it up and it appeared in newspapers around the state.  If you hear of any outside Texas, let me know!