The 25-foot long prehistoric reptile was on display at the airport until it was relocated in the mid-2010s.
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When DFW International Airport was being built in the 1970s, construction crews found the bones of a 70 million-year-old sea monster.
Well, it wasn’t a monster exactly, but a 25-foot long plesiosaur, a large dinosaur with a body similar to a lizard’s but with flippers like those on a porpoise. It was one of ɱaпy that roamed North Texas when water covered the land millions of years ago.
The nearly 10,000-pound fossil was put on display between Gates 10 and 11 at the Braniff International terminal at DFW Airport in 1975, and it remained there even after Braniff Airways ceased operations in May 1982. The artifact later was moved again, and in the mid-2010s, the plesiosaur was removed from the airport altogether.
That’s why Don Walther asked through the Curious Texas newsletter: “What happened to the prehistoric creature that was recovered when DFW was built?”
Louis Jacobs, professor of earth sciences at Southern Methodist University, confirmed via email that the bones were moved to the Shuler Museum of Paleontology at SMU in 2014. Museum director Dale Winkler says the bones are not on display due to limited space in the museum.
DFW Airport plesiosaur
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After the fossil’s discovery, it was removed and restored by a group at the Shuler Museum. The dig and restoration were made possible through a grant from Braniff International, and professor Bob H. Slaughter led the excavation tour with his graduate students.
A 1973 Dallas Morning News article reported that the plesiosaur would be sent to the Corpus Christi Museum, even after Slaughter wrote to DFW Airport suggesting the creature be displayed there. Slaughter reportedly received 23 letters from Highland Park Middle School students supporting his efforts to keep the dinosaur in the area.
The fossil “would be like a sideshow at the airport, and people would not be bored to death waiting for baggage or their plane,” penned one student. Another wrote that more visitors “will see it in the biggest airport in the world than in a little old museum in Corpus Christi.”
The bones were mounted in June 1975 in the Braniff Terminal, now known as Terminal B. The dinosaur sojourned throughout the airport before landing in DFW’s Central Utilities Plant, where it sat largely unnoticed until 2001, when the Airport Board considered using it as art in its new international terminal. That never happened — the relic remained in the plant until 2014.
The plesiosaur is just one of the Lone Star State’s ɱaпy prehistoric giants. The Dallas area is a hotbed for the fossils of plesiosaurs and other sea creatures, said Jacobs, some of whose own discoveries on display at the Smithsonian. The rocks underneath DFW Airport are from the Cretaceous period, and the area is prime for fossil discoveries; fragments of mammoth’s tooth and a horse’s toe found on DFW’s property last year date back to the Ice Age.