By Steve Hathcock
“I’ll bet you never caught one of these,” said Marion Desoto as he handed me a small rock with the outline of an ancient fish clearly visible on its surface.
“He’s right on that count,” I thought to myself as I reached for my magnifying glass.
“Where did you find it,” I asked as I studied the fossil.
This was a fairly small fish during its lifetime. Measuring just shy of three inches long, it was embedded in a coarse, cream colored chunk of fine clay. It had to be over twenty million years old I thought to myself as I turned it over in my hand.
“I was beachcombing about 20 miles north of the city limits,” said Desoto. “We were near the “narrows” (a high dune area right on the Cameron/Willacy county line). I happened to turn this rock over and saw the fish in it.”
I know the area well and have written many times of the fossils found in this area. There is a reason why this area consistently produces museum quality fossils and ancient stone artifacts left by the men who hunted camels and mammoth elephants along the great coastal plains that extended fifty miles east to the shores of a Gulf of Mexico, whose waters were three hundred and fifty feet shallower than that of the gulf today. Extremely low tides reveal the presence of clay banks that jut far out into the surf. This is a productive site for artifacts, especially after a good storm.
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