Saturday, July 29, 2023

Big dino discovery in the 'burbs

 

Laurel, Maryland is a suburb;  it depends on which direction you're looking as to whether it's a suburb of Washington D.C. or Baltimore.  I think opinion would lean toward it being a suburb of Washington D.C. more than Baltimore.

Regardless of which way it leans, it also has a place to dig up dinosaur bones.  And just recently, it was revealed that it's not just a few stray fragment of dinosaur bones, but it's a place with a whole lot of dinosaur bones.


Rare dinosaur bone bed discovered in D.C. suburb
" "Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist with the Smithsonian Institution, called the find “the most significant collection of dinosaur bones discovered along the Eastern Seaboard in the last hundred years.” Dinosaur fossils, Carrano said in a statement, “are exceptionally rare in the eastern US, and among these only Maryland has produced dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous Period. Typically, only one or two bones are found at a time, so this new discovery of a bonebed of fossils is extremely important.”

The article mentions that a tooth of Astrodon johnstoni, the state dinosaur of Maryland, was recently found at the site; below is an artist's depiction of AJ.




 

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