Teen Finds Dinosaur Fossil
By Laura Linn
Dec. 24, 2009
It turns out that fourth-grader Gabrielle Block, 9, has an eye for fossils. She is the first person to find a dinosaur bone at the new Dinosaur Park, a fossil site in Maryland, since the park opened to the public last month.
“Usually it takes a well-trained and practiced eye to be able to pick out the fossils from the rest of the clay,” park manager Donald Creveling told The Washington Post.
On November 21, Gabrielle found a half-inch fossil believed to be a bone from the tail of a small, meat-eating dinosaur. The dinosaur most likely lived more than 100 million years ago.
The fossil is now at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where paleontologists will examine it more closely.
Gabrielle found the fossil while sifting through dirt and rocks with her parents and 7-year-old sister, Rachael, who is the true dinosaur lover in the family.
“I was really excited and happy,” Gabrielle told The Washington Post.
Dinosaur Park
A dinosaur park may sound like something you’d see in the movies, with dinosaurs roaming among humans. Rather, it is an area of land where dinosaur fossils have been found that is open for public use.
Dinosaur Park in Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a 41-acre piece of land that is open the first and third Saturday of each month, so anyone who has an interest can hunt for fossils.
Gabrielle made her big find on just the second day the park was open to the public.
Amateurs, or nonprofessionals, and expert paleontologists have been finding fossils in this area for more than 150 years.
The state of Maryland created Dinosaur Park to preserve the fossil site from being destroyed by the construction of buildings in the area.
Creveling told The Baltimore Sun that Dinosaur Park is “one of the most productive sites for dinosaur and plant fossils east of the Mississippi River.” One big discovery made there was a 5-foot-long dinosaur bone in 1991.
The fossil was later identified as belonging to a brachiosaur that was at least 60 feet long and weighed several tons. The dinosaur likely lived during the Cretaceous period, between 65 million and 144 million years ago.
From Dinosaur to Fossil
Millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed over much of what is now the U.S., but the chance of finding a dinosaur fossil in your backyard is slim. Why? Many factors need to be just right for a fossil to form. Maryland’s climate and landscape during the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth varied.
Parts were steamy, volcanic lowland, while other areas were shallow, warm sea. The region was overflowing with life. The conditions were perfect for the preservation of dinosaur remains that would eventually become fossils.
The bones and shells of organisms that lived on land and in the sea were quickly buried in sediment, or tiny grains of material like ash, sand, and clay. This sediment was washed into the low-lying areas from the sea.
If the organisms’ remains were not destroyed, they eventually became fossilized.
How? As sediment accumulates, pressure causes the sediment to harden into rock. A fossil may be created that preserves an impression in the rock of bone, shells, or even plants. The remains within the sediment can also become petrified, or turned to stone.
This happens when minerals dissolved in water soak into the buried remains. Eventually, the minerals replace all or part of the organism remains, turning them into rock. The fossil that Gabrielle found is an example of a petrified fossil.
Paleontologists believe Dinosaur Park has many more fossils yet to be found. And Rachael Block hopes to follow in Sister Gabrielle’s footsteps by finding one of the dinosaur fossils that is still buried.
“I promised [Rachael] we’d go back next time [Dinosaur Park] is open,” her mom told The Washington Post.
Source: Scholastic News Online
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