Texas Inland Sea Ecosystem Mystery

In 1962, biologist Gordon C. Creel documented a bizarre salt spring near Estelline in northern Texas, about 500 miles from the nearest ocean, that sheltered a marine-style ecosystem including crabs, barnacles, seaweed, diatoms, and a single fish species. The crab found there was originally described as Hemigrapsus estellinensis, although a 2020 genetic analysis later concluded it was the same species as the Pacific shore crab Hemigrapsus oregonensis. The spring likely preserved this strange community as a relic from ancient changes in sea level, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a dike around it in January 1964, raising the salinity and wiping out much of the biota. By then the crab population had already vanished, and the spring’s weird inland marine world was gone.

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