Youngest Ever Dinosaur Fossil Found In Maryland

Paleontologists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have described a fossil, unearthed 14 years ago at College Park, Maryland, as the youngest nodosaur ever discovered.

Amateur dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford in 1997 discovered the fossil of an armored dinosaur hatchling in a creek bed following a large flood.

Nodosaurs are rarely found in the U.S., and Stanford's discovery is the first of a new genus and species, Propanoplosaurus marylandicus, that lived in the Early Cretaceous Era about 110 million years ago.

After identifying his find as a nodosaur, Stanford called David Weishampel, Ph.D, a professor of anatomy at Hopkins. He and his fellow researchers confirmed the fossil to be a nodosaur by identifying the pattern of bumps and grooves on the skull, although it had a shorter snout than others.

Weishampel said that Stanford's find also is the first dinosaur hatchling ever found in the eastern U.S.

"Now we can learn about the development of limbs and the development of skulls early on in a dinosaur's life," he said.

"We have the opportunity to find out about dinosaur parenting and reproductive biology, as well as more about the lives of Maryland dinosaurs in general," he added.
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