‘Rare find’ of 115-million-year-old fossils unearthed in Maryland. ‘This is a dream’
A rare dinosaur bone bed containing 115-million-year-old fossils has been unearthed in Maryland, officials and experts say.
During a dig at Prince George’s County’s Dinosaur Park in Laurel in late April, staff and volunteers found “the largest theropod fossil in eastern North America,” the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission said in a July 13 news release.
This fossil’s discovery, along with others found nearby, elevates the park’s classification to a bone bed, or an area containing fossils from “one or more species,” the commission said.
“Finding a bone bed like this is a dream for many paleontologists as they can offer a wealth of information on the ancient environments that preserved the fossils and provide more details on the extinct animals that previously may have only been known from a handful of specimens,” JP Hodnett, a paleontologist and program coordinator for the park, said in the release.
It is the first bone bed found in the state in more than a century, according to the commission.
“Most paleontologists have to travel across the country or go overseas to find something like this, so having this rare find so close to home is fantastic,” Hodnett said.
The fossil found in April is a 3-foot-long shin bone that Hodnett believes likely belongs to an Acrocanthosaurus, a species estimated to have measured 38 feet in length, making it the “largest theropod in the Early Cretaceous period,” the commission said.
The first bone found at the park in 2018 was a 4-foot-long limb bone, the commission said. Since then, a number of ancient plant and animal fossils have been unearthed, including dinosaur teeth, tail vertebra, shell fragments and “carbonized seed cone clusters.”
Fossils found at the park are from the Early Cretaceous period and are estimated to be 115 million years old, according to the commission.
“Dinosaur fossils are exceptionally rare in the eastern US, and among these only Maryland has produced dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous Period,” Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist with the Smithsonian, said in the release. “Typically, only one or two bones are found at a time, so this new discovery of a bonebed of fossils is extremely important.”
Thomas Holtz, a paleontologist with the University of Maryland who helped verify the theropod discovery, called the park, which is about 20 miles southwest of Baltimore, “the most important dinosaur dig site in America east of the Mississippi.”
“It is historically significant, as it was one of the first dinosaur fossil sites found in the U.S.” Holtz said in the release. “More importantly, it gives us insights into the diversity of animals and plants at a critical period in Earth’s history.”
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