Prince George’s County Parks is set to announce the discovery of a “Bone Bed,” the first of its kind since 1887. News4’s Tommy McFly takes us inside Dinosaur Park.
Not only does Maryland have an official state dinosaur, but it was discovered right in the DMV.
Prince George's County is home to Dinosaur Park, a public park and active dig site where members of the public can help paleontologists during community digs.
"In terms of the entirety of the North American East, this is the only site in that you can find and help collect dinosaur fossils regularly," said JP Hodnett, a paleontologist with Prince George's County Parks.
And the dig site at Dinosaur Park in Laurel is where the first fossils from an Astrodon -- Maryland's official dinosaur -- were discovered.
"Not every state" has a state dinosaur, Hodnett said. "First, you got to have a dinosaur in your state to really make the claim that you have a state dinosaur. Luckily, we do."
D.C. is lucky, too: Vertebrae from a large, meat-eating dinosaur was found not far from the Capitol building, leading to the scientifically unofficial official dinosaur for the District, the Capitalsaurus.
"All you can tell is it's a big meat eating dinosaur, and that's it," Hodnett said -- which is why "Capitalsaurus" isn't a scientific name. But it's appreciated in the District, even getting its own street sign near First and F Streets.
Sorry, Virginians -- no state dinosaur for you. But according to Hodnett, you do have dinosaur footprints!
Maryland, on the other hand, has a long history with its state dinosaurs.
"Astrodon was one of the first dinosaurs ever described from the state of Maryland," said Hodnett.
The dino roamed the land in what is now Prince George's County about 115 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous period, Hodnett said.
Several million years later, in 1858, then-State Agricultural Chemist Philip Tyson found two Astrodon teeth in the Arundel clay near Muirkirk. Those teeth were some of the earliest dinosaur fossils found in North America, according to the Maryland State Archives.
We now know the teeth to be part of a 20-ton, 50-to-60-foot long, 30-foot tall creature that had a long neck and ate plants like ferns.
But in the 1800s, the teeth alone were a groundbreaking discovery.
The term "Dinosauria" had only been coined in 1841, according to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The first dinosaur fossils in Maryland were discovered in 1858, by "African American miners working in open pit mines," according to PGC Parks.
When Tyson gave the teeth he'd found to local doctor and dentist Christopher Johnston in 1859, Johnston sliced one tooth into cross sections. By doing so, he discovered the star pattern that led to the dinosaur's name: Astrodon.
Astrodon became Maryland's state dinosaur over 100 years later, in 1998.
But plenty of other dinos also called Maryland home. According to Hodnett, there was even a "T. Rex-sized predator called Acrocanthosaurus."
Other scientific discoveries waiting in Dinosaur Park include crocodile teeth and fossilized wood and plant matter.
The crocodile teeth "are the most common animal fossils you'll find here at Dinosaur Park," Hodnett said. "They're pretty prevalent," but they're often stunningly old -- "50 million years older than Tyrannosaurus Rex."
And if you head to Dinosaur Park to find your own fossils, you're most likely to find a plant portion on your first trip.
"These little grooves and things like that, those are all the remains of plants," Hodnett said, gesturing to a fossil found by News4's Tommy McFly.
The playground and gardens nearby are open every day from sunrise until sunset. But if you want to try your hand at fossil hunting, visitors to Dinosaur Park can take part in public programs for free on the first and third Saturdays of each month.
Those public programs are the only time you can access the fenced fossil site.
If you stop by for a dig, you'll get to "learn surface collection techniques used by paleontologists in the field," according to PGC Parks.
"So the thing we tell people is that actually 80% of a job of paleontologists actually wandered around top, around hills, looking at surface of the ground," Hodnett said. "And what we're looking for are things that are different" than the surrounding area.
Word of warning: You can't take your fossil finds home with you. All discoveries get catalogued, preserved and stored in the Dinosaur Park lab. However, if you find something cool, your name will be recorded alongside the fossil forever, making you a part of paleontology history.
Go here to learn more about visiting Dinosaur Park.
The park may get busier soon, with Prince George's County set to announce a historic discovery from the prehistoric era Wednesday morning.
PGC Parks has discovered a "bone bed," the first of its kind to be found in Maryland since 1887.
Bone beds are areas where one or more species is concentrated in the same geologic layer of the earth.
Advance information about the discovery is thin on the ground, but a press conference with Hodlett, as well as a paleontologist from the University of Maryland, is scheduled for Wednesday morning.
