Fossil Found in College Park Belongs to Youngest Dinosaur of its Kind Discovered

Update, 12:48 p.m., Sept. 14, 2011

According to University of Maryland vertebrate paleontologist Tom Holtz, our city could be a hotbed for dinosaur fossils, reports The Gazette.

“We’ve long known that the bedrock on which College Park is built on is from the age of dinosaurs...” Holtz said. Read more on The Gazette.

Original Story, Sept. 12, 2011

Fourteen years ago, an amateur dinosaur fossil tracker discovered a fossil in College Park that’s recently been determined to belong to the youngest of that kind of dinosaur ever discovered, according to NBC.

Ray Stanford found the hatchling nodosaur in a creek bed in 1997, according to NBC. It lived about 110 million years ago, NBC reports.

The Associated Press wrote a profile about Stanford in January 2008. At that point, the man from Texas had been searching Maryland streambeds for evidence of dinosaurs for the previous 13 years.

According to a GEOTIMES article in March that same year, Stanford has accumulated so many dinosaur footprints, which he stored in his Maryland home, that the floorboards had to be reinforced.

It’s believed that Stanford’s discovery will lead to more knowledge about Maryland dinosaurs.