When Dinosaurs Roamed the Grove, Or Maybe Swam In It
by Tim Campbell · first published 15 August 2019 · his original post
Attached are several photographs of stones which were picked up within a few miles of Blooming Grove. The darkest one was found by Thomas Mitchell Campbell, your author's grandfather. As a young man Grampa would walk from Blooming Grove to the area where Navarro Mills Lake is now located, and pick up arrowheads,hundreds if not thousands of which were sold to a fellow by the name of Robert S. Reading, who wrote a book on the Native American tribes of Texas and donated a great number of arrowheads, many of which were bought from T.M. Campbell, to Navarro College,Corsicana, Texas, where they were on display in the "Arrowhead Room" for many years. Anyway, it was during one of these trips that Grampa came home with the dark stone in the photo.
I mailed the stone to Baylor University for analysis about 42 years ago, before the age of cell phones and internet, and a gentleman who was a professor of archaeology there sent the stone back with a letter stating that it was a piece of the spine of a mosasaur.
A few years ago, the larger bone you see in the photos was found about a mile or two southeast of Blooming Grove where Rush Creek has a rock bottom. Several bones similar to this one were found in a deep ravine near the old ghost town of Cottonwood between Barry and Dresden. I am told by several folks "in the know", that these bones are also of mosasaurs.
It is said the mosasaur was something akin to the alligator gars that inhabit Navarro Mills Lake, but on a much grander scale. These finds would therefore indicate that at some point in prehistoric times the Grove might have been under water. However, along the Bosque River, about 55 or so miles west of Blooming Grove, there have been found skeletons of land dwelling dinosaurs, as a wooly mammoth was found in Waco and in Glen Rose tracks of at least 6 different varieties of land dwelling dinosaurs have been found.
The last 2 photos are scientists' perceptions of what a mosasaur might have looked like. You wouldn't want to hook one of these boys with your Zebco reel.