STARKVILLE, Miss. — 2024 will be a year with many fresh faces for Mississippi State football. Former Oklahoma offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby will be the head coach for the first time in his career.

The Southeastern Conference is also undergoing heavy change as it welcomes Texas and Oklahoma to the conference. SEC Media Days is drawing near, which begins “talking season,” which means football is just around the corner.

Each of the 16 SEC teams will send three players on behalf of their school, and it was hard to pencil in who the Bulldogs would send. However, MSU announced today that the most prominent new face on campus, Blake Shapen, will represent State.

Shapen spent the past four seasons at Baylor and served as the starter for most games when healthy. The Shreveport, La. native was impressive in the MSU spring game and seems poised to usher in the Lebby era under center.

Bulldog veteran Albert Reese IV will be the second offensive player to represent State. The 6-7 320-pound offensive lineman has always had an impressive frame and got a bulk of the first team reps in the spring game.

The junior offense lineman seems poised to finally break through this season for the Bulldogs. The lone defensive player to represent MSU in Dallas is John Lewis.

The Canton, Miss. native has all the physical gifts to be a dynamic player in the SEC. The former 4-star recruit has played quite a few snaps in his Bulldog career but is yet to take the next step.

However, new State defensive coordinator Coleman Hutzler might bring a suitable scheme for Lewis. The 6-3 240-pound linebacker has the frame to be a good pass rusher, and under Hutzler, he should get more opportunities to get after the quarterback.

The Bulldogs will hit the stage on Wednesday, July 17th, in Dallas, TX.

The most complete dinosaur fossil found in Mississippi, considered “incredibly unusual” by state officials, remains 85 percent buried since its discovery in 2007.

Paleontologists have identified the specimen as a hadrosaur, a family of duck-billed, herbivorous dinosaurs that lived over 82 million years ago. The hadrosaur family includes at least 61 identified species, with potentially hundreds more having once roamed the Earth.

Dinosaur remains in Mississippi

Researchers have unearthed portions of the spinal vertebrae, forearm, feet, and pelvic bones of this specimen. However, extracting the rest of the fossil from its location near Booneville in northeast Mississippi has proven challenging.

“This thing sat for a while because we didn’t have anybody to work on it,” said James Starnes, an official with the state’s geology office.

3D method of forensic bone analysis

For nearly two decades, the specific species of this hadrosaur fossil remained unidentified. Researchers are now using a 3D method of forensic bone analysis called geometric morphometrics to solve the mystery before the fossil is fully unearthed.

Derek Hoffman, a geology graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), is analyzing the hadrosaur’s remains with this method. “What geometric morphometrics does is it takes a shape-analysis approach,” he explained.

This method determines key features or ‘landmarks’ for a given bone sample and compares their distances and ratios via complex statistical models to identify differences and similarities with known bones.

Mississippi dinosaur fossils

Hoffman’s work is complicated by the fact that some pieces of the fossil are in the hands of private collectors. His research primarily focuses on the bones held by the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science. 

“We have quite a few of the vertebrae,” said Museum paleontology curator George Phillips. “We have one humerus. We have one ulna. The ulna is the posterior of the forearm. We have some of the foot bones. Then we have the pubis.”

The adult hadrosaur’s ulna measures about two feet long, and the humerus is around a foot and a half. A complete adult hadrosaur’s foot bones can exceed 50 pounds in total weight. However, the dinosaur’s skull, the most unique feature for differentiating hadrosaur species, has yet to be found.

Hadrosaur species 

Different hadrosaur species evolved with a wide variety of crowns on their duck-billed heads, including structures like a rooster’s comb. Paleontologists are still debating the biological purpose of these features, but their diversity has contributed to the recorded variety of the hadrosaur family.

Hoffman is focusing on the dinosaur’s pubis, a bone from the front of the pelvis, as the next best choice for identifying the fossil’s species. 

Although differences between hadrosaur species’ pubis bones are often too subtle for the naked eye, rigorous mathematical approaches like geometric morphometrics can reveal hidden distinctions. With these methods, Hoffman hopes to narrow down the potential species of this Mississippi fossil.

The hadrosaur likely measured about 25-26 feet long and stood around 16 feet tall when perched on its hind legs. 

Well-represented dinosaurs in the fossil record 

Researchers believe that the hadrosaur lineage started in North America and eventually migrated globally, with fossils found in Asia, South America, Europe, and North Africa. “They’re the most well-represented dinosaurs in the fossil record, without a doubt,” Hoffmann said.

Hadrosaurs, whose name comes from the Ancient Greek for “stout lizard,” ranged from about 2.2 to 4.4 tons. Examples of hadrosaur species include the Parasaurolophus, known for its long, backward-curving crest, and the Edmontosaurus, which had a crest made from soft tissue like a rooster.

Starnes described the 2007 hadrosaur discovery near Booneville as “incredibly unusual.” 

“We just don’t have a lot of skeletons. We have pieces and parts, but not a skeleton,” he said. Despite the nearly two decades it has taken to unearth just a fraction of the fossil, he hopes the project will eventually be completed.

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Jeff Lebby has a major rebuild facing him in Starkville.

Mississippi State football is coming off its worst season in over a decade, the roster is facing massive overturn, and a grueling 2024 schedule awaits to make an immediate turnaround that much more difficult. Add in Lebby’s inexperience as a head coach, and you can understand why expectations for Bulldog football this fall aren’t particularly high.

But what Jeff Lebby should at least bring is the ability to score points. A direct branch off the Art Briles Baylor tree, Lebby’s seen immediate offensive success at each of his previous stops, and the programs that have installed similar offenses to his have quickly become competitive, often in spite of struggling defenses.

Many Bulldog fans and media have looked to the 2020 Ole Miss squad for a glimpse of what could be in store for State this year. Jeff Lebby was the offensive coordinator for that Rebel offense under first year HC Lane Kiffin. Ole Miss had one of the nation’s best offenses (and one of the worst defenses) and made major improvements compared to 2019

As much as it makes sense to draw comparisons to that Ole Miss team given Lebby’s role on that staff, another SEC team from a year later may actually provide more parallels.

The 2021 Tennessee Volunteers also adopted the Briles offense under new HC Josh Heupel, whom Jeff Lebby worked for at UCF. The Vols, like 2020 Ole Miss, made huge strides almost entirely because of their effectiveness on offense. But what made their turnaround even more impressive was the situation Heupel inherited upon taking over.

Tennessee had bottomed-out in 2020 under Jeremy Pruitt, were facing NCAA sanctions, and had almost every major contributor on the roster transfer out. They seemed poised for a lengthy rebuild. But with the offense Heupel brought in, they found success with a largely unproven roster and avoided a reset.

At least in the preseason, there are shades of 2021 Tennessee in 2024 Mississippi State. Let’s take a closer look at the similarities between the two