DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says, out there three miles southeast of where you're standing right now. Now, most folks driving through Roberts County figure the big stories belong to the cowboys and the cattlemen. And they're not wrong.
But the ground out here has been holding onto a secret a whole lot longer than any rancher ever has — about thirteen million years longer, give or take. Three miles southeast of here, on what was once the C. C.
Coffee Ranch, there are fossil beds. And not just any fossil beds — at the time they were discovered, geologists cited them as one of the most prolific fossil fields of lower Pliocene age anywhere. Thirteen million years old, these beds.
Sit with that for a second. Thirteen. Million.
Years. Now here's where it gets interesting. It wasn't some grand scientific expedition that cracked this open first.
It was the geologists of the Rio Bravo Oil Company, out here in 1928 doing what oil people do — looking for what's underground. And what they found wasn't oil. It was bones.
Ancient bones, buried deep in the Texas earth, waiting. Their reports — and you can imagine the stir those caused — brought specialists from several major institutions out to the area. Because what was buried in those beds was something else entirely.
A prehistoric camel. A kind of antelope. A horse.
A bone-crushing dog — and I want you to really hear those words, bone-crushing dog — a mastodon, and a wild pig. A whole vanished world, pressed into the rock beneath a Texas ranch. The story doesn't end in 1928, either.
Scientists kept coming back, kept studying, kept turning it over. And in 1941 — thirteen years after those oil company geologists first filed their reports — scientists formally adopted the name Hemphillian as the designation for the entire geologic age represented by these fossils. Hemphillian.
Named for what was found right here, on the C. C. Coffee Ranch, in Roberts County, Texas.
Sometimes the ground doesn't just hold history. It holds time itself.
What the marker says
(Three miles southeast) Cited as one of most prolific fossil fields of lower Pliocene age at time of discovery, these beds are about 13,000,000 years old. Geologists of Rio Bravo Oil Company found them in 1928 on C. C. Coffee Ranch, and their reports brought specialists from several major institutions to the area. The fossil bones buried here included (among others) those of a prehistoric camel, a kind of antelope, horse, bone-crushing dog, mastodon, and wild pig. Further studies led scientists in 1941 to adopt "Hemphillian" as the name for the geologic age represented by these fossils. (1970)