About two decades ago, while doing the research on Judge Bravo for my political biography, Border Boss: Manuel B. Bravo and Zapata County, which was published by Texas A&M University Press, I came across an article in The Laredo Times, dated September 7, 1951, by Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen. During his tenure in office he wrote a column entitled, “Lloyd’s Letter.”
What caught my attention was the opening paragraph:
“Something old and different was found on the Mexican side of the Río Grande during excavations for the new international Falcon Dam, raising the shades on the border’s pre-historic era, uncovering a new fossil.”
His narrative continued, “A big, ultra-modern scoop bit chunks out of the dam site, as the operator uncovered a 10-foot high mastodon, resembling an elephant, standing on the bedrock.
“International Boundary and Water Commissioner L.M. Lawson estimates the mastodon had been standing there many centuries before it had to give way to the new dam. Commissioner Lawson told your Congressman he figured that way back in the dim past the mastodon was caught in quicksand. Through the years the quicksand turned to sandstone and the mastodon was preserved. When unearthed the mastodon was covered with long hair. Shortly after his discovery, the object crumpled to pieces — but not the two tusks, eight feet long apiece, which are going to be sent to the Smithsonian Institute, Commissioner Lawson said.”
Needless to say, my curiosity concerning the status of the two mastodon tusks exuberantly piqued to an insatiable drive to locate them. I immediately wrote letters to Dr. Lonn Taylor, with the National Museum of American History; Dr. Richard Alhborn, with the Smithsonian Institution; Mr. M.R. Ybarra, with the International Boundary and Water Commission; Dr. Ernest Lundelius, Director of the Vertebrate Paleontology Lab at the University of Texas at Austin; Dr. Sally Y. Shelton, with the Natural History Conservation Lab at the Texas Memorial Museum; and Dr.. William DeMichele, with the National Museum of Natural History’s Department of Paleobiology.
Dr. Taylor’s response: “If the tusks were indeed sent here, they would have been sent to the National Museum of Natural History, which is another bureau of the Smithsonian. I suggest that you address an inquiry to Dr. William DeMichele. I cannot speak to the question of whether or not the tusks, if they are here, would be available for loan.” The reference to the loan was that if the tusks did exist, I was trying to get them on loan for the Zapata County Museum of History, the Republic of the Rio Grande Museum in Laredo, and the Witte Museum in San Antonio.
Dr. Alhborn’s response: “The 1951 news article only provides a ‘hint’ that Comm. Lawson ‘was going to’ send the tusks to SI [Smithsonian Institute]. He probably never did, but to check out our ‘sources’ of mastodon tusks, if any, may require some very deep digging in 40+ year old files. However, if their records in Paleobiology are categorized by donor (Lawson?) or site (Texas: Falcon Dam, or Mexico: ‘name of site’?) there may be a chance of learning more about the tusks. My suggestion is to call Paleobiology in February and inquire about your tusks directly. Good hunting.”
Dr. DeMichele’s response: “I have searched our collection, our catalogue and accession records, and a journal concerning specimens sent here for identification during the 1950’s, and I find no record for two mastodon tusks from L.M. Lawson. I wonder if Mr. Lawson changed his mind when he found out how much it would cost to send here two eight foot tusks that together probably weighed 100 pounds or more. Do you think he could have sent them to the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin?”
I personally went to the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin but to no avail.
Dr. Shelton’s response: “I wouldn’t have been the person to talk to in Austin, anyway. You should contact Dr. Ernest Lundelius,..”
Dr. Lundelius’s response: “I have checked our records and collections here at the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory and find no record of such mastodon tusks. I have also checked with Dr. Thomas Hester at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory here at the University of Texas, and he, too, has no record of the mastodon tusks. I am sorry that I was your last resort and couldn’t help you in any way.”
And finally, Mr. Ybarra’s response: “We find no reference in the archaeological reports for 1950, 1951, or 1952 to the find of any mastodon tusks or intact remains as referenced in the newspaper column you enclosed. We have not found any U.S. Section record that these were donated to the Smithsonian Museum. There are references to ‘rotted fragments of tusk or elephant or mammoth were encountered in the bed of the arroyo where they lay exposed.’ in the Report of Archaeological Salvage in Falcon Reservoir, Season of 1952, Volume 23, Bulletin of Texas Archaeological and Paleontological Society, October 1952, Lubbock, Texas. Also, in the Archaeological Salvage in the Falcon Reservoir Area: Progress Report No.1, a Joint Project of the National Park Service and the University of Texas dated 1950 there is a reference to ‘reaching a remote spot on the Mexican side where Aveleyra had found mammoth bones with flakes and artifacts nearby.'”
Now, according to a book published by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Press in 1999, the same year I published the book on Judge Bravo, entitled, After The Dinosaurs: A Texas Tropical Paradise Recovered at Lake Casa Blanca, by Dr. James W. Westgate, Associate Professor of Geology at Lamar University and Research Associate, Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, the Middle Eocene Epoch (the second geologic epoch of the Paleogene) which covers Webb and Zapata Counties, existed from 66 to 23 million years ago, and this Middle Eocene strata extended all the way to New Jersey.
The shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico was indented all the way to the lower Rio Grande Valley, forming what paleontologists named the Rio Grande Embayment. Based on concrete evidence, Dr. Westgate has been able to date, through fossil remains found at Lake Casa Blanca, that the area around Laredo and Zapata goes back 42 million years ago. This was about 20 million years after the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
Forty-two million years ago, the area from Lake Casa Blanca to Zapata was covered with a lush tropical forest and bordered by coastal or aquatic tropical trees, especially of the mangrove family.
Dr. Westgate and his research team have uncovered fossils of 29 extinct mammal species identified from over 1,500 isolated teeth and jaws. According to the author, “The most complete is a rib cage and partial vertebral column discovered in the banks of the Rio Grande River near Falcon, Texas, sometime around 1950. We also discovered fossil ribs from at least three sirenians (sea cows) exposed on Dolores Creek in Zapata County, on the 3-D Ranch.”
Well, nobody seems to know what happened to these two mastodon tusks. Unfortunately, I could not put closure to my investigative search. And, probably they are hanging over the mantel of someone’s fireplace. We may never know the outcome of this interesting story.
