I've been goin' digital. Which, in this case, means goin' through paper files and
separatin' years of detritus into groups: can, scan-and-can, keep.
I found a 1937 newspaper clippin' which was sort of intriguin'.
I contacted the Museum at Texas Tech -- resulting in a fascinatin' exchange:
Although Dr. Clark took the fossil to Tech, nothin' much happened until 1949 when Dr. Wann Langston, Jr., examined it with an eye to taxonomic classification. At the time, no other examples of this particular kind of creature had ever been found. Dr.Langston assigned it to genus Paleorhinus, and he coined the species name scurriensis because of the Scurry County connection.
Fast forward. In 2013, Dr. Michelle Stocker took another look and determined that Dr.Langston's genus assignment didn't really fit. She assigned it to genus Wannia which was named in honor of Dr. Wann Langston.
I have copies of both Dr. Langston's and Dr. Stocker's papers. I'm pretty sure you don't want to read them, but I'll email 'em to ya if ya do.
I don't know that an exact date has been established, but it's somewhere around 220 million years old.
So there it stands. A rock became Paleorhinus scurriensis which became Wannia scurriensis.
And this specimen is still the only one of its kind that has ever been found.
But that's not the whole story.
One contradiction showed up. The newspaper article reports the find as bein' on that W.W. Early farm that we referred to as the Camp Springs place [even though it was actually 2-3 miles east of Camp Springs, almost to the eastern boundary of Scurry County]. But Dr.Langston's article puts the discovery on the H.G. Bryan farm. Hmmmm.
Now, let's set the scene:
It's late February or early March 1937. Time to get the fields ready to plant cotton. Eight-year-old Hugh Bryan is wanderin' around in a plowed field and spots a rock. And it's sufficiently unusual to merit further attention even though parts of the fossil are absent, and some of the rest is embedded in a sandstone matrix. And it's not all that big -- mebbe about 21 1/2" [550 mm] in the longest dimension.
Looks like a rock to me, but o.k., o.k., here's a little more provocative view:
What happened next? Why was young Hugh on W.W.'s farm? Put yourself in his shoes [well, he was prolly barefoot], and think about what you would do.
Ok, W.W. was NOT farming in 1937. In fact, he died in September 1937, just a few months after the fossil was found. I don't much expect that [W.W.’s sons] Worley or J.B. were farming. Worley was busy with the newly-opened (1 January 1937) E&H Cafe. And J.B. was, I suspect, busy as a mechanic. The girls certainly weren't farming. Shoot, Pricie insisted that her girls
never even learn to milk cows so that they'd never have to. So W.W. had, no doubt, arranged for someone else to do the farming; H.G. Bryan, perhaps?, who mebbe so had an 8-year-old son
named Hugh?. Perhaps H.G. was plowin', and young Hugh was there to help, maybe to tote rocks over to the nearest fence row.
"Daddy, look what I found!"
So, H.G. totes the rock into town [Hermleigh] to give to W.W.; after all, it's W.W.'s farm, so it's W.W.'s rock. Now, in a very small town like Hermleigh, W.W. knew everybody, the names of their kids, and probably the names of most of their horses and mules. He had been president of the Hermleigh school board. In 1937, he and Pricie lived right across the street from the Hermleigh school (in a house that, in 1997, was still standing, in very good shape,
and occupied). And in March, school was in session.
W.W. or Pricie or even Vera (at 16, I expect she was still at home although she later spenta little time at Tech) might then have contacted one of the school teachers; a science teacher, perhaps, or at least one with connections to, or maybe a degree from, Texas Tech.
Now what? It's 1937. Can't snap a picture with an iPhone and email it to someone at Tech and ask if they wanta come look. Choices are somewhat limited. It's hard to imagine that W.W. would've wanted to pay for a telephone call or a telegram (Hermleigh was on the railroad, so telegrams were possible; in fact, that's how Worley notified Vera in
California of Ila's death in 1947). Or, perhaps a letter was sent to the science department at Tech, although I've heard no mention of such a letter in the file associated with Wannia scurriensis.
Aside: FDR didn't sign the Rural Electrification Act until 1936. But a picture inside W.W.'s store in Hermleigh in the early 1930s shows light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Perhaps Hermleigh had its own generating plant. Also, the Communications Act, which created the FCC and preceded the REA by two years, aimed to expand telephone service which had already been
growing in Texas and nationwide. It's certainly plausible that long distance communication COULD occur without smoke signals.
And communication DID occur. Dr. Clark DID travel to Scurry County. And he DID take the fossil back to Tech. And the rest is history.
So, that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it whether it's true or not. Perhaps you
recall the John Ford classic "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles, Andy Devine, Woody Strode, Strother Martin, andlots of others whose names you'll recognize. If you've not seen it, it's time to put it on your "must see" list. Anyway, the tagline was, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
