In 2021 my wife Jude and I (Erik) purchased 43 acres of Chihuahuan desert property in Terlingua, Texas close to Big Bend National Park. The land is entirely off grid, isolated, and amazing. Our goal is to build our own self sufficient home with solar and rain water catchment so we can move here full time.

Fossils


This area is part of the Aguja formation (cretaceus Period) and includes deposits from when the area was an inland sea. We find mosasaur bones, ammonites, giant clams, and other assorted aquatic fossils from 75 million years ago.

This is ~ 70% of the fossil bones I have found on my property. Most are vertabrae and flipper/phlange bones from mosasaur but I have also found fish bones and other sea dwelling bones.

Unidentifed tooth.

A mosasaur bone as I find them when walking our property. They are so dispersed and on the surface so I don’t have a good spot if I wanted to satart digging (and I do, I DO!!).

I contend this graphic is a bit off since this map leaves our area out of the seaway. Fossil evidence proves our place was underwater during the Cretaceus period 145 – 66 million years ago.