Local prehistoric site to be open for public tours

Image
  • Lyla Jones, one of the team members for the paleontology team at Roland Springs Ranch, dug up part of an ancient turtle shell at the dig site Wednesday. Tours of the dig site will begin Saturday at 10 a.m.
    Lyla Jones, one of the team members for the paleontology team at Roland Springs Ranch, dug up part of an ancient turtle shell at the dig site Wednesday. Tours of the dig site will begin Saturday at 10 a.m.
Body

This summer, the public may see the site where Dr. Eileen Johnson and her paleontologic team have spent more than a decade discovering what has been buried in Scurry County for millions of years.
In 2005, bones were found at Roland Springs Ranch, located near U.S. Hwy. 180 in Scurry County. Tina Roland, who discovered the bones, contacted Johnson, the director of the Lubbock Lake Landmark Museum at Texas Tech University.
After examining the bones, Johnson said the remains were from the early Pleistocene epoch, about 2.5 million years ago. Paleontological dig sites from the early Pleistocene era are increasingly rare, with only a few in North America. Johnson said the site at Roland Springs is the only one in Texas.
“I first asked them, ‘Do you realize what you have here?’’ Johnson said. “The animal remains they are finding are incredible.”
Many of the species whose  uncovered at the site are extinct, from giant tortoises to an a pygmy rabbit. After Johnson and her team examine a specimen and determine its origins, the Rolands would donate the findings to the museum.
“I can’t say enough about how much the Roland family has done for us,” Johnson said. “They have been exceedingly helpful and good to us.”
Eleven years after first coming to the ranch, Johnson and her team come every summer.
From the beginning of June to mid-July, Johnson’s students, assistants and other team members are at the dig site from 7 a.m. to about 4:30 p.m., slowly and methodically digging and then studying the findings to learn about the history of the land.
Johnson makes a weekly trip to Scurry County to check on the site, and said she hopes to continue digging for as long as possible.
“We don’t have an ending date,” Johnson said. “It depends on the data and it also depends on how long the Rolands will allow us to be here.”
For more than a decade, the site has been a relative mystery around the county, with only a few groups visiting on unofficial tours.
However, starting Saturday, the dig site will be open to the public for guided tours through a partnership between the Lubbock Lake Landmark Museum and Scurry County Museum.
Johnson said the goal of the tours is to raise awareness and spread the word about this historic site.
“It’s a different way of viewing the research,” Johnson said. “It’s a way of getting the community involved, because it’s part of the regional heritage in this area.”
John Moretti, Johnson’s graduate assistant at Texas Tech, said the tours will show how the research is done and will help explain why it is done.
“The goal is to introduce what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and why it is important,” Johnson said. “We’ll be showing them how we dig, and we will also have a lab that people will be allowed to check out.”
The tours are free and will be held each Saturday through July 2. Participants are asked to call the musuem in order for a head count to be made.
The group will meet at the museum at 9:30 a.m. and travel by personal vehicle to the ranch. Each tour will be approximately one hour.