Fossil Beds

Geologists now usually set the Hemphillian, the North American land-mammal age these beds gave a name to, at about 10.3 to 4.9 million years ago, overlapping the late Miocene and the early Pliocene. In that sequence it follows the Clarendonian and comes before the Blancan. The plaque's thirteen million years and lower Pliocene reflect the dating of 1970. In Miami, the Roberts County Museum in the restored Santa Fe depot holds paleontological material collected by Judge J. A. Mead in the 1930s. The county around the beds is still almost all pasture, 89 percent in 2002.

What the plaque says

(Three miles southeast) Cited as one of most prolific fossil fields of lower Pliocene age at time of discovery, these beds are about 13,000,000 years old. Geologists of Rio Bravo Oil Company found them in 1928 on C. C. Coffee Ranch, and their reports brought specialists from several major institutions to the area. The fossil bones buried here included (among others) those of a prehistoric camel, a kind of antelope, horse, bone-crushing dog, mastodon, and wild pig. Further studies led scientists in 1941 to adopt "Hemphillian" as the name for the geologic age represented by these fossils. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Roberts County Museum — 5.6 mi
  The county museum in Miami's old Santa Fe depot, holding mammoth bones and Clovis points from a 1934 dig, in the cow town that has held a cow-calling contest since 1949.
• The Citadelle Art Museum — 15 mi
  A 1910 Baptist church saved from demolition in 1977, made into a family home filled with art, and given to Canadian in 2009 as one of the Panhandle's few art museums.
• River Valley Pioneer Museum — 15 mi
  The Hemphill County museum in Canadian, a Santa Fe division town of 1887 on the river breaks that held one of the first commercial rodeos in Texas and voted itself dry in 1903.
• Canadian River Wagon Bridge — 17 mi
  The longest pin-connected bridge in Texas, 3,255 feet of Parker trusses across the Canadian River at Canadian, built for wagons in 1916 and reopened as a footpath in 2000.

More markers nearby

• Roberts County — 1.1 mi
• County Named for Prominent Confederate Colonel O. M. Roberts — 5.5 mi
• Miami Railroad Depot — 5.6 mi
• Cottage Hotel — 5.7 mi