How a team of scientists helped fill a gap in Texas’ natural history

Steve May and his colleagues are finalists for Texan of the Year.

It’s amazing how finding just a few fossilized bone fragments can add to our understanding of Texas’ natural history, and the scientists who work hard finding and studying them are just as amazing.

A 1938 paper about the Malone Mountains in West Texas contained a single line about large bone fragments in the area. It caught the eye of Steve May, a research associate at the University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences Museum of Earth History. “I thought, oh my gosh, you know, this is where we need to go.”