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Dear PaleoNetters,
David Dockery of the Mississippi Office of Geology asked me to post this.
With a lot of letters, the locality could perhaps be saved.
Lucy E. Edwards
Below is a letter to Colonel Clapp concerning the flooding of the Town
Creek Locality for the Moodys Branch Formation in Jackson, MS. If you
agree with it, please share it with others and take a little time to tell
him that this site is important. Also, please send me a copy of your
letter for our file. Thanks.
David T. Dockery III
Mississippi Office of Geology
P.O. Box 20307
Jackson, MS 39289-1307
Frederick L. Clapp, Jr.
Colonel, Corps of Engineers
Vicksburg District, Corps of Engineers
4155 Clay Street
Vicksburg, Mississippi 39183-3435
Dear Colonel Clapp:
The Twin Lakes proposal threatens to flood a fossil site on Town
Creek that is the type locality of the Jackson Group and one of the most
important scientific sites in Mississippi. In biological nomenclature, the
Town Creek site is the type locality for 57 species of fossil mollusks and
has a total documented molluscan fauna of some 204 species (as well as a
great diversity of other invertebrate and vertebrate fossils). It is also
the type locality for the Jacksonian Stage of the Late Eocene, an interval
of geologic time (between 38 and 34 million years ago) recognized
worldwide. Sir Charles Lyell first recognized the Town Creek site to be of
Eocene age when he collected fossils there in 1846. In 1854, Wailes
illustrated fossil shells from Town Creek in the first book on the
Agriculture and Geology of Mississippi. In 1856, New York State
paleontologist Timothy Conrad named the Jackson Group and gave the
Jacksonian fossils their scientific names.
Town Creek is locality #1 in the Mississippi Office of Geology's list
of some 150 important geologic sites. The Sunday, October 4, 1981 (page
11B) edition of the Clarion Ledger featured French scientists excavating
Jacksonian fossils at Town Creek. Other scientists have come to study the
site from Belgium, Japan, and elsewhere. Scientists at Texas A&M recently
unraveled the seasonal record of ancient ocean water temperatures from
oxygen isotopes in fossil shells from Town Creek. The most recent paper,
published by the Paleontological Society of Japan in December of 2003
(Kobashi and Grossman, 2003), featured two large Conus shells from Town
Creek with seasonal sea-water temperature records that spanned 7 and 8
years of shell growth. Only the Town Creek locality contains large
well-preserved fossil shells suitable for such studies. Another recent
publication on the site's fossils was a chapter in a volume by Columbia
University Press (2003). We have spent billions of dollars to study the
geology of Mars. Why destroy perhaps the most diverse fossil site in
Mississippi, and one that has made the name JACKSONIAN (Stage) famous.
The scientific value of the type Jacksonian locality at Town Creek
includes the following areas of research:
1. Biodiversity of marine organisms living 38 million years ago in
the Gulf of Mexico Basin. Town Creek has the most diverse benthic marine
fauna for this time in the Western Hemisphere.
2. Earth's climate history as found in seasonal sea-water
temperatures derived from oxygen isotopes analyzed from fossil shells. This
line of research is very important in predicting the trend and impact of
global warming.
3. The history of global sea-level fluctuations. The type Jackson
site was flooded by a sea-level rise 38 million years ago that sent Gulf
water north of Memphis, Tennessee.
4. Biostratigraphy. As the type locality of the Jacksonian Stage,
microscopic marine fossils from Town Creek are used in correlating marine
units worldwide.
The U. S. Corps of Engineers funded a paleontological survey of the
same strata exposed at the Montgomery Landing site on the Red River in
Grant Parish, Louisiana (and the best fossil locality in the State of
Louisiana) when the site was threatened by the Red River Waterway. The
study was conducted by the LSU Geology Department and funded for the amount
of $174,271. The work was carried out from August of 1979 to August 1980
and resulted in the discovery and excavation of a Basilosaurus skeleton
with a well-preserved skull. The site was not flooded by the waterway but,
today, is overgrown because of it. Some 154 molluscan species were listed
from the Moodys Branch Formation at the Montgomery Landing site by Dockery
(1986, p. 62-65) as compared to 204 species known from the Moodys Branch
Formation at Town Creek.
Thank you for your consideration of this important scientific site.
Sincerely
David T. Dockery III
P.S. the following is a selected list of references on the type Jacksonian
Stage at Town Creek:
Lyell, C., 1847, On the relative age and position of the so-called
nummulite limestone of Alabama: American Journal of Science, 2nd
series, v. 4, p. 186-191. In a diagram, Lyell showed the correct
sequence of the Jackson and Vicksburg beds and their westward dip
toward the Mississippi River.
Wailes, B. L. C., 1854, Report on the Agriculture and Geology of
Mississippi: E. Barksdale State Printer, Jackson, Mississippi, 371 p.
Fossils from Town Creek as named by T. A. Conrad were discussed on
pages 274-275 and illustrated in plates 14-17. The location of these
fossil is given as "the bed of the creek emptying into Pearl River
immediately below the crossing of the Jackson and Brandon Railroad."
A list of fossils was published on page 289.
Conrad, T. A., 1856, Observations on the Eocene deposits of Jackson,
Mississippi, with descriptions of thirty-four new species of shells
and corals: Academy of Natural Science of Philadelphia, Proceedings
for 1885, v. 7, p. 257-263. In the publication Conrad described new
species from Town Creek and named the Jackson Group.
Sullivan, J. M., 1942, Some new fossils from the Mississippi Eocene:
Journal of the the Mississippi Academy of Sciences, 6th Annual
Meeting, February 28, 1942, v. 3 (1941-1947), p. 153-162. This paper
discusses two new fossils from Town Creek, the alcyonarian coral
Eogorgia sullivani Hickson, 1938, and the helmet shell Galeodea
(Gomphopages?) millsapsi Sullivan and Gardner, 1939. The former was
collected by Sullivan and his Millsaps College student Sale Watkins
and the latter by Sullivan. Sullivan also collected a Basilosaurus
vertebra on Town Creek at an excavation for a concrete pier some feet
below the surface of the Moodys Branch Formation, which was sent to
Remington Kellogg, who identified it as a Basilosaurus "near
brachyspondylus."
Harris, G. D., and K. V. W. Palmer, 1946-1947, The Mollusca of the Jackson
Eocene on the Mississippi Embayment (Sabine River to Alabama River):
Bulletins of American Paleontology, v. 30, 561 p., 65 pl. Town Creek
is Paleontological Research Institution localities 785 (collected by
Harris, Palmer, and Flower, 1935), 880 (collected by Watkins), 881
(collected by Harris, Palmer, Palmer, and Watkins, September, 1938),
1051 (collected by Harris, October, 1940).
Dockery, D. T., III, 1977, Mollusca of the Moodys Branch Formation,
Mississippi: Mississippi Geological Survey, Bulletin 120, 212 p., 28
pl. The majority of the molluscan species illustrated in the work
were collected from the Town Creek locality.
Dockery, D. T., III, 1986, Molluscan diversity in the Moodys Branch
Formation (Eocene) -- north-central Gulf Coastal Plain, p. 57-66, in
Schiebout, J. A., and W. van den Bold, Montgomery Landing site,
marine Eocene (Jackson) of central Louisiana: Proceeding of a
Symposium 1986 Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies, Annual
Meeting, Baton Rogue, Louisiana, 238 p. This paper discusses the
Montgomery Landing and Town Creek localities and notes that the Town
Creek locality has the greater faunal diversity.
Kobashi, T., E. L. Grossman, T. E. Yancey, and David T. Dockery III, 2001,
Reevaluation of conflicting Eocene tropical temperature estimates:
Molluskan oxygen isotope evidence for warm low latitudes: Geology, v.
29, no. 11, November 2001, p. 983-986.
Dockery, D. T., III, and P. Lozouet, 2003, Molluscan faunas across the
Eocene/Oligocene boundary in the North American Gulf Coastal Plain,
with comparisons to those of the Eocene and Oligocene of France, p.
303-340, in Prothero, D. R., L. C. Ivany, and E. A. Nesbitt, From
Greenhouse to Icehouse. The Marine Eocene-Oligocene Transition:
Columbia University Press, New York, 541 p. The history of the type
Jackson locality is discussed and 427 fossil molluscan species from
the Jackson Group are listed.
Kobashi, Takuro, and E. L. Grossman, 2003, The oxygen isotopic record of
seasonality in Conus shells and its application to understanding late
middle Eocene (38 Ma) climate: Paleontological Society of Japan,
Paleontological Research, v. 7, no. 4, p. 343-355., p. 343-355.
Partial index: