Girl hits pay dirt on a fossil hunt with her family
Bone thought to be 100 million years old found at park in Md.
By Megan Greenwell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
If there were any doubts that dinosaurs once roamed Prince George's County, a 9-year-old girl may have put them to rest.
On Saturday, just the second time the newly named Dinosaur Park, south of Laurel, was open to the public, fourth-grader Gabrielle Block stumbled on a tail bone from a carnivore thought to be more than 100 million years old. It was the first significant find on the site since the 7.5-acre park held its initial public session this month.
Gabrielle, who came to the park from her Annandale home with her parents and 7-year-old sister, hadn't found anything more unusual than rocks and pieces of trees in nearly an hour at the park. The vast majority of people don't, park manager Donald Creveling said.
"Usually it takes a well-trained and practiced eye to be able to pick out the fossils from the rest of the clay," Creveling said. "But perhaps she was helped because she doesn't have a biased eye."
The site, behind an office park at the end of Mid-Atlantic Boulevard near Contee Road, has been producing fossils since the 1850s, forming what experts call the most important dinosaur site east of the Mississippi River. In 2005, an amateur explorer found a two-foot dinosaur leg bone.
The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission formally created Dinosaur Park this fall to preserve the property from development or degradation. The group decided to open the park to amateur fossil hunters the first and third Saturday of each month. They drew 30 people at the first session and more than 40 the day the Block family visited.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/24/AR2009112401606.html?wprss=rss_metro/md
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