Jessica Bliss, USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

This story was originally published on this website on Nov. 6, 2016.

Crews blasted more than 30 feet into the limestone and hauled away four dump-truck loads of debris before construction came to a jarring halt.

While clearing a downtown plot at 4th Avenue and Union, a workman operating a backhoe unexpectedly hit an earthen area — a crevice in the otherwise solid rock. Then came the bigger shock. The crevice held remains of historic proportions.

Exposed in the newly disturbed brown dust lay a nine-inch long, ivory-colored fang. The dagger-like canine of what would later be identified as Tennessee's first-known saber-toothed cat.

It was the summer of 1971 and discovery of the long-extinct, predatory creature and his cave became a national news story written about in several scientific journals.

Decades later, the archeological find also inspired the name of the city's NHL team — the Nashville Predators.

For nearly 35 years, the bones of the saber-toothed cat have been displayed inside the 28-story skyscraper built on the site. This week, they will be unveiled at Bridgestone Arena with a presentation during the Predators game on Nov. 8.

As the home of the hockey team namesake, the arena seems to be the rightful place for the bones, says Gabriel Coltea, a managing member of UBS Tower.

"The bones are such an important part of the franchise's history, and it only makes sense for them to be at the home of the Preds," he said. The relocation brings with it the ideal opportunity to retell a folkloric Nashville tale. One that shocked the city as front-page news years ago, and one that seems so relevant now with the construction boom taking place in Nashville today.

"I was amazed at a discovery like that,” remembers retired amateur archeologist John Dowd, who worked on the saber-tooth excavation site 35 years ago. “There’s a lot of things in the ground that you don’t know.

"That you don't expect."

Fang finders

The fang finding of 1971 sparked an immediate flurry of activity.

At the time, Vanderbilt’s Department of Anthropology focused on archaeological sites in Mexico. So Nashville archaeological matters were directed to the Southeastern Indian Antiquities Survey (SIAS), a local amateur group led by founder Bob Ferguson.

On the day the saber tooth was found, Ferguson, a successful executive with Radio Corporation of America, was in the middle of a meeting with Johnny Cash. The Man in Black had just handed Ferguson a $10,000 check to help the local anthropological organization further its study of Indians of the Southeast when the telephone rang.

On the other end of the line was Tom Seigenthaler, the Nashville public relations exec handling affairs for First American National Bank. Seigenthaler asked if Ferguson could swing by the construction headquarters of the planned First American Center to "look at some material he believed was of archeological importance."

As soon as Ferguson deposited Cash's check in the bank, he headed downtown.

There, all attention turned to bits of human and animal teeth — large and small — arranged on a 9-by-11 inch sheet of paper on a drafting table.

Among them, the fang.

The men in the room, including the construction site foreman, a geologist and two archeologists, stood in hushed amazement.

They were looking at the remains of an animal that carbon-dating would show lived more than 9,000 years ago.

"It was as though time was jumbled before our eyes," Ferguson wrote in a personal manuscript documenting the event, which Dowd later published.

Then they visited the cave. What had once been the sheltered den of a predator now looked more like a mud-filled sinkhole. But it held prehistoric treasure.

The Stone Age beast — also known as a Smilodon from the Greek words for "knife" and "tooth" — made his kills, dragging them back to his den at that very spot. There were animal bones from a mastodon, a horse, a possible bison and specimens of peccary, animals that resembled old-world pigs.

The cave excavation also unearthed the bones of four humans believed to be buried in rock-lined crypts near the ceiling of the cave thousands of years after the saber-toothed cat lived there.

But the saber tooth drew the most attention. That particular animal had never been reported in Middle Tennessee.

"The Nashville Smilodon may well have been one of the last of its breed," John Guilday of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History would later write in a letter to Ferguson.

They needed to know what else was buried in the dirt.

First American provided access and assistance in the excavation. It altered construction plans so the cave site could be saved for study after the building had been completed, and it paid for crucial radio-carbon testing to date the discovered bones. Bank officials also had the contractors include a 38-foot concrete beam to support a wall above the cave and put a 300-pound manhole cover over it.

When construction work stopped at 4:30 p.m. each weekday, several of Nashville's best amateur archaeologists began the careful excavation of the site.

Among them, were Dowd, who worked full-time job as a shipping warehouseman for Western Electric, and Les Leverett, a National Life and Grand Ole Opry photographer who documented the excavation with pictures.

Dowd couldn't help but anticipate what would be unearthed.

"I knew it was going to be something rare," he said. "In archeology, you are always looking ahead and wondering what you were going to find next."

Predator emerges from history

Early one Saturday morning, Dowd led a caravan of cars filled with volunteers to a location where four truck loads of construction-site dirt had been dumped near the Cumberland River.

The crew sifted through as much debris as it could, carrying load after load up the steep river embankment. A water tank loaned by the Tennessee National Guard helped them water down the dirt and screen for fragments of bone.

"We ended up with half the saber-tooth cat," Dowd said.

In all, archaeologists worked part-time for 60 days before the steel and concrete walls of the new skyscraper enclosed the area around the cavern.

In that time, they unearthed more than 1,000 pieces of bone, including the two forelegs of the saber-toothed cat and a crushed human humerus and jaw bone. In the process, they also uncovered a remarkable pre-historic tale.

"The story behind the discovery of the saber-tooth tiger bones when the building was under construction in 1971 is extraordinary," Coltea said. "At the time when the remains were discovered, it captivated the entire city. Had it not been for the construction of this building, would we even have an NHL hockey team called the Nashville Predators?"

Dowd imagines very few hockey fans actually know the story behind it. But now, with the cat's new home just a few blocks from where it was discovered, the story will live on.

At a time when dynamite blasts are commonplace and a new construction dig seems to begin nearly every day, it makes you wonder what still remains hidden underneath our streets and rising skyscrapers.

What other secrets are buried in the mud below our feet?

Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and on Twitter @jlbliss.