I made a trip to a different spot on the North Sulfur River yesterday morning. I had been to this spot one time last year, but an unforecast rain shower showed up and turned the river into such a muddy mess that I turned around and left without finding anything. With a 100 degree high forecast for today, I didn’t figure rain would be a problem.

I found some of the usual things you expect to find at NSR, Hamulus worm tubes, a gastropod, a perfectly preserved complete bivalve, some interesting bones, and lots of bacculites. The only bacculite I brought home was the one in this photo, with the great suture lines.

I thought these two bones were especially interesting. They look like mosasaur bones to me, but I can’t tell from what part of the mosasaur. Here are views of both sides of each of them.

But yesterday was the day for verts. And each time I found one, it was bigger than the last. First, I found this little shark vert. It’s in pretty rough shape, but still put a smile on my face when I spotted it.

Then I found this mosasaur vert.

Then I spotted this fish vert. This is the largest fish vert I’ve found.

But if I thought that was going to be the biggest vert of the day, I was seriously mistaken. As I was on my way to leave the river, I spotted this. It’s a mosasaur vert. A really big mosasaur vert. How gigantic did that mosasaur have to be? I’m aware that mosasaurs grew to some pretty huge sizes, but I had no idea there were any this big that had roamed north Texas. Here are several views. It’s over 10 cm in diameter (that’s 4 inches in Texan measurement), and even taller than that. This view of it in my hand seems to do the best job of showing just how big it is.


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