Coon Creek Formation

The Coon Creek Formation is a late Cretaceous deposit located in West Tennessee and Northeast Mississippi. The formation has produced fossils from the marine life of the Western Interior Seaway like Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs, and Tennessee’s state fossil Pterotrigonia thoracica. The University of Tennessee at Martin’s Coon Creek Science Center conducts a lot of important fossil collecting and research on the Coon Creek Formation and continues to help us understand Tennessee’s past.

The only complete dinosaur bone found and displayed in Tennessee is this Hadrosaur chevron (part of the vertebra) at Earth Experience. It likely ended up in the Coon Creek Formation after the hadrosaur’s body washed out into the Western Interior Seaway and fossilized.

A small team from Earth Experience conducted a dig in the Coon Creek Formation in 2024 to unearth a large sea turtle’s plastron. [Photo by Joe Nochera]

Plesiosaur vertebra found in the Coon Creek Formation. More on this fossil here.

The sea turtle plastron collected in 2024. More on this fossil here.