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This fierce sea creature’s skeleton, spotted a century ago by students, returns to limited public display this year.
By Denise Gamino
Elon Musk and the Tesla Gigafactory may be the biggest recent sensations in eastern Travis County near the Colorado River, but about 66 million years ago, a truly jaw-dropping phenomenon roamed that area.
SEE THE DINOSAUR PICTURE AND DRAWING SUBMISSIONS
Meet the immense sea creature that got to Texas ages before anyone else.
MORE DINOSAUR SITES IN TEXAS
The Onion Creek Mosasaur was a ferociously aggressive 30-foot marine reptile that lived during the dinosaur age. Its 3-foot-wide open mouth and 4-foot-long jaw made it the top predator — and largest animal — in the inland sea that covered much of Texas and 40% of present-day North America millions of years ago. The voracious mosasaurs, swimming in water as deep as 600 feet, “would eat pretty much anything which could fit into their enormous mouths — which, it turns out, was a lot,” according to the National Park Service. Its diet included sharks, fish, birds, ammonites (extinct mollusks) and even other mosasaurs.
The menacing mosasaur (MOSE-uh-sawr) skeleton is the preeminent display at the Texas Memorial Museum on the University of Texas at Austin campus. The museum was closed to the public almost a year ago because of budget cuts, but new funding has allowed behind-the-scenes work to continue. The museum is scheduled to reopen in stages, beginning this fall. The Onion Creek Mosasaur will be seen from afar by visitors at that time, but the public would be allowed a closer inspection of the mosasaur when the second phase of the museum’s reopening occurs in the spring of 2024.
Texas Memorial Museum’s website describes the Onion Creek Mosasaur skeleton as “spectacular.” It’s believed that geologists first saw a part of the giant fossil 100 years ago near present-day Texas 71 and Onion Creek, but the nearly complete skeleton was found there in 1935 by fossil-hunting UT geology students. Those students graduated and went on to have prominent careers in the oil — a fossil fuel — industry.
No one knows whether other petrified mosasaurs may be buried in that area, possibly now covered by roads or buildings. Unlike the federal government, Texas does not require a paleontology review before construction projects begin.
But for at least a century, the area of Onion Creek near today’s Travis County Southeast Metropolitan Park has been known as such a “fossiliferous,” or fossil-rich, spot that it became a favorite specimen-hunting site for UT geology professors and their students. Most finds were oyster shells, clams and other fossilized seashells.
Mosasaurs existed in the Late Cretaceous Period, which geologists believe ended violently about 66 million years ago when an asteroid about 6 miles wide slammed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, causing an enormous inferno and a deadly planetwide dust cloud. The impact is thought to have been as powerful as 10 billion atomic bombs of the type used in World War II. The result was the mass extinction of all dinosaurs (except the forerunners of today’s birds), as well as ocean creatures such as mosasaurs, ammonites and plesiosaurs.
Millennia after that extinction event, on a Saturday afternoon in the fall of 1935, sophomore UT geology students W. Clyde Ikins, from Weatherford west of Fort Worth, and John Peter “Pete” Smith, from Dallas, made the 14-mile trip from the UT campus to the fossil-hunting site on Onion Creek. They were looking for fossilized marine oysters, a common specimen to the area, to fulfill a laboratory assignment.
“We had gone about a quarter of a mile north of the highway bridge on the east bank of the creek when we discovered some bones sticking out of the bank near the water level,” Ikins wrote to UT in the mid-1960s. “We found several vertebrae, rib bones, and a section of the jaw bone about two feet long. The jaw was complete with the large teeth which were used to crush mollusks. The teeth were so well preserved that they had their original polish and luster. At this stage we were very impressed with our find, but had no idea that it would turn out to be probably the most complete mosasaur skeleton that has been found to date.”
Smith was equally proud. “We got a great thrill out of the find as I had been hoping to find one since the day that Dr. (Robert) Cuyler (associate professor of geology) took us on our first Geology 1 field trip,” he wrote in a 1967 letter to UT. “He mentioned that they (mosasaurs) were around, it just took time to find them.”
Ikins and Smith dug out several mosasaur bones that day and brought them back to UT.
University geology officials were beyond elated by the rare discovery. The prized bones were found just in time to be excavated and showcased in UT’s Gregory Gymnasium as part of a statewide extravaganza to celebrate the 1936 Texas Centennial. They also hoped the mosasaur would bring public and scientific enthusiasm for the Texas Memorial Museum, then in the planning stages. It would open in 1939.
UT’s 1936 Centennial Exposition featured an array of Texas natural science exhibits — such as dinosaur tracks and anthropology dioramas — that drew visitors from all over Texas as well as every other state and 39 countries. The expo ran from June through November 1936, and then cleared out for UT basketball season. It was so popular that visiting hours had to be extended to accommodate the crowds, who could watch the mosasaur bones (except for the skull) being cleaned, preserved and readied for display.
The Onion Creek Mosasaur skeleton “is a particularly lucky find because the specimen is perfect,” noted the late H.B. Stenzel, a geologist who directed the 1936 excavation for UT’s Bureau of Economic Geology, the university’s oldest research unit. His comments were included in a June 7, 1936, UT press release about the Centennial Expo. “With careful supervision, we will have the most perfect specimen of mosasaur yet found in the world.”
Unfortunately, a calamity at the end of the expo delayed the mosasaur’s full public debut at the Texas Memorial Museum for several decades. Workers moving the mosasaur skeleton dropped it, and the bones shattered into many pieces and small fragments. “It remained in this condition for years and years,” Ikins wrote in his mid-1960s letter to the Texas Memorial Museum. “I think the only part of the skeleton that remained in any recognizable form was the head.”
The mosasaur remained asunder until the 1960s, when notable paleontologist Wann Langston, Jr. arrived at UT. He began a two-year process of reassembling the mosasaur skeleton and reconstructing some missing parts so the entire thing could finally be put on public display.
“The paleontologist and preparator reassembled all parts of the skeleton in a natural (swimming) position,” Langston wrote about the mosasaur in a 1966 detailed scholarly study for the Texas Memorial Museum. “As is usual with fossils, some parts of the Onion Creek Mosasaur had been lost before the skeleton was buried and some bones were destroyed by weathering before the discovery was made,” Langston wrote.
“Missing parts were molded in plaster and assembled in their appropriate places among the original bones. These included most of the paddle bones, some vertebrae, ribs, and various parts of the skull and jaws.”
The mosasaur quickly became the museum’s top exhibit when it went on display in the mid-1960s. Ten years later, UT learned that the university’s connection to the mosasaur was older than previously thought.
In 1975, former UT geology student L.T. “Slim” Barrow, the retired board chairman of Humble Oil and Refining Co. (later to become Exxon), sent a letter of congratulations to UT for, among other things, “the perfect job” of reassembling the mosasaur. He said he had been among a group of UT geology students in 1923 or 1924 who had seen some of the mosasaur’s vertebrae at Onion Creek. The students began to dig, Barrow wrote, but “we realized it was too big a job for us and quit before we had done any damage.” Twelve years later, Ikins and Smith found the nearly complete skeleton.
The Onion Creek Mosasaur was far from the only mosasaur that swam the Cretaceous waters that covered much of what is now Texas, while dinosaurs roamed on land. "Fossilized parts of several mosasaur species have been collected from roughly 100 spots in Texas,” said paleontologist and geologist Chris Sagebiel, the current collections manager of UT’s Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections. “However, most sites produce only one tooth, or only a bone or two.”
Western Kansas is a hot spot for mosasaur fossils, ranging from single bones to nearly complete skeletons. In Texas, similar “chalk deposits and associated limestone and shale are exposed in a narrow band extending from northeastern Texas (Red River and Bowie counties) southwestward to San Antonio, and westward toward the Big Bend,” Langston wrote in 1966.
“Dallas, Waco, and Austin are all built on these rocks, and mosasaur bones have been found in them, especially in Dallas, McLennan, Williamson, Travis, and Hays counties.”
In 2022, an amateur fossil hunter discovered part of a mosasaur skeleton in the streambed of the North Sulphur River 80 miles northeast of Dallas. Paleontologists from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas excavated parts of the fossilized skull, lower jawbone and vertebrae, and plan to continue excavation work.
The exact location of most fossil sites is protected information, and is even exempt from freedom of information laws to preserve them from commercial hunters or vandals, UT’s Sagebiel said. However, the location where the Onion Creek Mosasaur was found is no longer secret because it has been destroyed over the decades by construction on the Texas 71 bridge over Onion Creek. “I believe that the actual (mosasaur fossil) site has since been thoroughly excavated, demolished and concreted over,” he said.
Even with the Onion Creek Mosasaur’s last resting place no longer accessible, Texas still has plenty of ancient creature fossils yet to be found. In fact, the “most fossiliferous site in Texas” is in another part of Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative’s service area, according to the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies. That is a spot along the Brazos River in Burleson County, where a huge deposit of marine fossils includes the remains of snails, oysters, clams and shark teeth.
Collectors have hunted for centuries at that fossil site, under the Texas 21 bridge northeast of Caldwell. Texas A&M University students and science groups still make regular field trips there.
The Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History in Bryan features fossils from the Museum of the A&M College of Texas, which closed in 1965. The Brazos Valley Museum’s collection includes ice age and dinosaur age and casts, including skulls of a mastadon, a triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus rex.
But Texas’ biggest paleontology finds have been made in the Big Bend area of far West Texas. A Texas Pterosaur, with a wingspan of almost 40 feet, was found in that region. You will be able to see its reconstructed skeleton soar in the Great Hall of the Texas Memorial Museum when it reopens in the fall.
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From fossils to fossil-fuel careers
L. T. ‘SLIM’ BARROW Barrow, who spotted some of the Onion Creek Mosasaur bones in 1923 or 1924, was a native of Manor and played football and basketball for the Longhorns while studying geology. Humble Oil and Refining Company (now Exxon) hired him as a field geologist for surface geologic mapping in Caldwell and Guadalupe counties, where Humble discovered the Salt Flat and Darst Creek oilfields, according to the Texas State Historical Association. He became Humble’s chief geologist in 1929 and rose to chairman of the oil company’s board in 1948. He helped establish a memorial endowment to UT’s Geology Foundation in the late 1950s, in honor of one of his former professors. Barrow died in 1978.
W. CLYDE IKINS One of two UT geology students who found the nearly complete skeleton in 1935, Ikins studied chemistry, botany and geology at UT, earning a doctoral degree in geology. He began his geology career with the Black Mesa Mining Company exploring for brilliant red cinnabar (mercury ore) in Terlingua, near today’s Big Bend National Park. He became chief geologist for Dow Chemical, and later president and CEO of Hondo Petroleum. His botany interests were focused on waterlilies, irises, cacti and succulents. In 1981, he donated his sweeping cacti and succulent collection gathered from around the world to his botanist friend, Dr. Barton Warnock, for a botanical garden in the Big Bend area. Ikins became one of the world’s foremost experts on water lilies and irises. He died in 2005, but today, the peony-like “Nymphaea Clyde Ikins” water lily is still available for sale.
JOHN PETER ‘PETE’ SMITH Smith, along with Ikins, found the nearly complete skeleton in 1935. He went on to become the exploration manager for Esso (Standard) oil’s Libya division and was based in Tripoli. Esso was owned by Standard Oil and became Exxon in 1972. Esso was famous for an ad that encouraged drivers to “put a tiger in your tank” with Esso Extra premium gasoline. Smith retired from Standard Oil in 1967.
History on hold
The Texas Memorial Museum of science and natural history began, appropriately, with a big bang. In June 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set off the dynamite that broke ground for the museum on the University of Texas campus in Austin. Roosevelt, who was on a presidential campaign train trip across Texas, remained on his parked passenger train near present-day East Fourth Street and Interstate 35 while pushing a big red, remote-control button to blast the limestone. The museum temporarily closed to the public in March 2022 because of a staff shortage. However, with university support and fundraising efforts, staff are renovating the museum to open in stages, beginning in September. The Onion Creek Mosasaur will be on display — from a distance — when the museum reopens, but visitors will not be able to get close to it until the second phase of reopening in spring of 2024. The museum is at 2400 Trinity St. in Austin. — Denise Gamino
Meet the Onion Creek Mosasaur!
Things to do in the Lee County seat
By Alyssa Meinke
The heart of Giddings, home of the high school Buffaloes sports teams, is at the intersection of busy U.S. highways 290 and 77 in Lee County. The town is 55 miles east of Austin and 107 miles west of Houston. It was founded in 1871, after brothers J.D. and DeWitt Giddings financed the Houston & Texas Central Railway, which transported cotton from Houston to Dallas and fueled an economic engine for the region. Giddings was incorporated in 1913, with 2,000 residents, and a 1980s oil boom brought growth. Today Giddings has more than 5,000 residents.
WHAT TO DO
Altman Plants, 1180 Private Road 2906, 3½ miles west of downtown off U.S. 290, is the largest commercial nursery in Texas. You can stop and browse through the assortment of discounted plants for sale to the public from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, and 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays. While you’re there, admire its more than 50 acres of massive greenhouses.
Check out one of the state’s largest privately collected arrowhead displays at the Giddings Public Library and Cultural Center, 276 N. Orange St., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Thursday, and 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays.
Also worth a stop is the historic 1879 Schubert-Fletcher Home housing the Lee County Museum, 183 E. Hempstead St., 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday. Although construction partially blocks the view, stop to admire the architecture of the Lee County Courthouse, built in 1899, 200 S. Main St., and the many murals around the city, particularly the historic Depression-era mural inside the post office, called “Cowboys Receiving the Mail,” 279 E. Austin St., which is also U.S. 290. Get more information at co.lee.tx.us and giddingstx.com.
Looking for live music or a screen to watch sports? Check out Giddings Brewhaus, 199 N. Burleson St., from 3-11 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, and 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sundays. Home of the “Zoch Bock,” Brewhaus serves craft beers, wines and food, from pizza and hot wings to German specialties like schnitzel.
Before you strike out for home, hit one of the 16 lanes at Leesure Lanes bowling alley, 2249 W. U.S. 290, from 6 p.m.-midnight, Fridays and Saturdays.
GRAB A BITE
Reba’s Pizza & Deli, 208 E. Austin St., 10 a.m.-9 p.m. daily, is a good spot to stop for lunch. It serves homestyle soups, wraps, salads, quiche, specialty pizza and more. Save room for homemade fudge or a scoop of Blue Bell ice cream.
Other dining options ranked in Trip Advisor’s top restaurants in Giddings are:
Los Patrones Mexican Grill, 2880 E. Austin St., 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Sunday.
Taqueria Chihuahua, 1865 E. Austin St., 5:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Saturday.
City Meat Market, 101 W. Austin St., 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 8 a.m.-2:30 p.m., Saturdays.
STOP AND SHOP
Giddings has several boutiques and gift shops run by local entrepreneurs. Here are three located close together:
Ashley’s Attic, 687 E. Austin St., is a one-stop eclectic shop for gifts, clothes, accessories and Kendra Scott jewelry; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays and noon-5 p.m. Sundays.
Gourmet Divas, at 721 E. Austin St., is a local favorite for cookware, bakeware, spices and kitchen gadgets; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays. Divas hosts cooking classes periodically; get information at facebook.com/gourmetdivastx.
The Grapevine, 790 E. Austin St., sells gifts, apparel, footwear, home and seasonal decor, plus bags and purses, including those by Consuela; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays and noon-5 p.m. Sundays.
Some other shopping options:
For quilters, All Around the Block Quilt Shop, 979 N. Leon St., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays, is a haven for fabric and sewing supplies.
For antiques, stop by Whistle Stop Antiques, 1122 E. Austin St., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily, or Roadhouse Antiques, 791 E. Austin St., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily.
Rejuvenation Thrift Store, 179 S. Main St., 9:30 a.m-1 pm. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; benefits local residents in need.
TIPS FROM LOCALS
If a train is chugging through town, traffic can back up on either side of the tracks on U.S. 290. If you’re headed west, take a left turn on East Hempstead Street and drive parallel to U.S. 290 to avoid traffic in town.
Take an Instagrammable cruise through town by following the map from the Giddings Chamber of Commerce’s driving tour; get information here.
This is part of a series of guides on spending a day in one of Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative’s service area communities.
BY ED CROWELL
When Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative powered the first light bulbs in rural Central Texas in 1939, the World’s Fair in New York was unveiling an all-electric home with a dazzling kitchen, complete with a refrigerator, electric range, dishwasher, coffee maker, garbage disposal, food mixer and an automatic toaster.
To allow buyers in Texas and other states to get a close look at these life-changing devices, the federal Rural Electrification Administration outfitted a traveling show of circus tents filled with innovative home appliances. The caravan of dreams drew crowds by the thousands, and by the early 1940s, appliance sales were skyrocketing.
Wood-burning stoves, clothing washboards and heavy hand irons heated by a fire — all of which required backbreaking labor — were pushed aside for these conveniences of modern living.
The consumer race for electric appliances gained momentum as World War II ended in 1945. The post-war housing boom increased consumer demand for kitchen appliances as well as electric radios and then TVs.
By the 1950s, color televisions were available, though most popular TV shows aired in black-and-white until the late 1950s or early 1960s. General Electric made its household appliances pop by adding color such as Petal Pink and Canary Yellow (a design trend that may have influenced the future Apple CEO Steve Jobs in the late 1990s when he unveiled colorful “flavors” of the iMac personal desktop computer: blueberry, strawberry, lime, tangerine and grape).
At Bluebonnet’s then-headquarters in Giddings, electric appliances could be viewed and touched, just like in a retail showroom. Bluebonnet held appliance demonstrations in small towns and communities across its service area.
The 1960s and 1970s brought the ability to save substantial time on cooking. Microwaves, Crock-Pots and Mr. Coffee — the first automatic drip machine — were unveiled and embraced by consumers. Cuisinart food processors and hot-air popcorn poppers also made kitchen time less onerous.
Again, Bluebonnet took center stage to help consumers understand how all those new appliances could change lives. Bluebonnet hired Lavonne Morrow to demonstrate microwave cooking, and some events drew more than 100 eager learners. She shared recipes for microwave casseroles, three-minute fudge and even a tiny birthday cake baked in an ice cream cone. To consumers’ amazement, she showed how an entire meal for six people could be prepared and cooked in a microwave in just 30 to 45 minutes.
Clearly, electric appliances were changing American culture. The convenience of a microwave, washing machine or vacuum cleaner freed more time for work outside the home. Growing numbers of American women joined the workforce for a paycheck.
America turned its attention to the environment in the 1970s, as oil and gas supply crises brought long lines at the gas pumps and prompted President Jimmy Carter to ask Americans to save energy by turning thermostats to 65 or lower in the winter.
It’s no surprise that the 1980s and 1990s saw advances in energy efficiency in home appliances and a big turn toward automation. In 1992, the Environmental Protection Agency introduced the Energy Star program to promote the purchase of energy-efficient appliances.
Today’s digital age is bringing increasingly “smart” electronics into the home that merge internet connectivity with phones, computers, artificial intelligence devices and appliances. Alexa, the voice-activated virtual assistant in the Amazon Echo device, was unveiled in 2016, and 100 million had been sold by the end of 2018, according to the company. A seemingly endless stream of other new devices can connect with the Echo or its top competitor, Google Home. Virtual assistants can turn on and off smart appliances and timers, stream music and read books to you, and each adds new skills regularly. A glut of smart security cameras that allow you to view the outside or inside of your home on your phone are popping up everywhere.
In the living room, consumers are making way for big-screen televisions with curved displays, screens that roll up and down and technology that illuminates every pixel in the screen. That means viewers can sit at any angle to the screen without a distorted image.
Some of today’s refrigerators have cameras inside to show whether you need to buy milk or eggs when you check from a smartphone while at the grocery store. Samsung’s $4,100 fridge also has a computer screen on the outside door for searching recipes, displaying family photos and keeping lists and calendars. GE’s new Kitchen Hub is a smart screen on a stove ventilation hood. It controls the thermostat and lights, security cameras, and other smart appliances. Users can stream movies and music and have video chats.
Or, there is always the option to just ignore all of these chatty, mind-boggling innovations.
Today’s refrigerators are a long way from the Giddings High School “home ec” classes that Shirley Hannes began teaching in 1961. She commanded four kitchen nooks filled with stoves, refrigerators, washers and dryers, all loaned by Bluebonnet. Hannes made certain her students knew how to use the latest in home appliances, some of which must have glowed in mid-century hues of Harvest Gold and Avocado.
Hannes, who now lives south of Houston in Pearland, doesn’t want a virtual assistant like Alexa, but she loves the two-door refrigerator she bought in 2018 because it makes and dispenses ice.
She’s not one to replace appliances just to have the newest model. “We built our house in 1976, and the stove was new then,” she said. “It’s still in good shape, so I’m not planning to replace it yet.”