Locations of Dinosaur Digs
The following questions were answered by dinosaur expert Don Lessem, paleontologist Tim Rowe, and paleontologist Bill Hammer.
Q: Where have most of the dinosaur remains been found in the world?
A: The U.S. is number one in kinds of dinosaurs found, though the single
best place in numbers of species found is Dinosaur Provincial Park in
Alberta, Canada, where some 37 kinds of dinosaurs have been found.
Mongolia and Argentina are now sources of many interesting dinosaurs.
(Don Lessem)
Q: Where do you think is the best place for finding dinosaur fossils?
What tools and techniques do you use to find dinosaurs?
A: The best place to look for fossils are in badlands and deserts where
there are no plants or buildings covering the bones and the rocks are of
dinosaur age — like in Montana and Utah. Bring a pick and shovel and
awl or screwdriver if you go on a dig. The Dinosaur Society, a charity I
help, can send you a list of places to dig with scientists. Their number
is 1-800-DINODON. Their tools are crowbars and drills and even dynamite
to remove the rock from the fossils. Then, when they get close to the
bones, they use picks and, when closer, tiny awls, even toothbrushes and
brooms. You cover the bones, with a lot of dirt still on them, in
plaster and burlap bandages and haul it back to the museum for fine
cleaning in the winter. (Don Lessem)
Q: In what state can you find a lot of dinosaur bones?
A: Dinosaurs are found in 35 states and on every continent, wherever
rocks from dinosaur time on ancient land are now on the surface. The
best dinosaur-searching places are deserts and badlands out West. (Don
Lessem)
Q: What kind of dinosaurs lived in southern New Mexico?
A: There are several kinds of dinosaurs that lived in southern New
Mexico in the late Cretaceous. A big ceratopsian, probably triceratops,
and a big carnosaur like Tyrannosaurus rex have both been collected. And
if these guys were around, there must have been duck-billed dinosaurs,
ankylosaurs, birds, and possibly others as well. (Tim Rowe)
Q: I've heard that dinosaur bones have been discovered in Oregon and
California. Can you tell me if they have names yet? Also, have any
dinosaur bones been found in Vermont?
A: Just scraps of dinosaurs have been found — and only in the last 20
years — in Oregon and California. They are probably bits of a duckbill
and an ankylosaur, an armored dinosaur. None that I know of have been
found in Vermont. Vermont was underwater in much of dinosaur time and
dinosaurs didn't live in water. (Don Lessem)
Q: Have you found any dinosaur bones in Austin, Texas? About how far did
you dig to find the dinosaur bones?
A: So far no one has found any dinosaurs here in Austin. But we have
found some dinosaur tracks which are in the middle of one of the city's
parks. They are from an ostrich-sized carnivorous dinosaur. Most of the
rocks around here were deposited in the ocean, so we mostly find marine
reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs inside the city. Strictly
speaking, these are not dinosaurs but they are still very exciting to
find. We found all of them by looking for bones lying on the surface of
the ground. Only after we found some pieces did we know where to dig.
The plesiosaur skeleton took about six weeks to dig up. The hole it came
out of was not very deep but it took a long time because the rock it was
in was very hard. (Tim Rowe)
Q: Are there any places to look for dinosaur fossils in Texas?
A: There are many fossil bones and footprints. Near Dallas, in Mill Sap,
a boy found two duckbill skeletons. And outside a Motorola factory in
Fort Worth, another boy found parts of an armored dinosaur. I've dug for
dinosaurs in Post, near Lubbock. Some of the best fossil footprints are
on the Paluxy River in the center of the state. (Don Lessem)
Q: Has a dinosaur ever been discovered near Rye, New York?
A: There are dinosaur bones in Connecticut. And a lot of dinosaur
footprints. You might want to go to Rocky Hill, Connecticut, some day
and see the hundreds of dinosaur tracks there. The museum is closed for
renovations but you can bring vegetable oil and a big bag of plaster and
make your own cast of a dinosaur footprint if you want to keep one! (Don
Lessem)
Q: Have dinosaurs ever been found in North Carolina?
A: There were scraps of dinosaurs found in North Carolina, but I don't
know where you are in the state. The Black Creek Formation in North
Carolina had a big, T. rex-like meat-eater and a duckbill, both about 70
million years old, found in 1979, but they were just little scraps of
bone that had washed out to an ancient waterway. (Don Lessem)
Q: I would like to dig for dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert. Can you give me
advice?
A: It isn't cheap or easy to get to the Gobi Desert, but it is worth the
trip. I wanted to go ever since I was nine, when I read the adventures
of Roy Chapman Andrews, the real-life Indiana Jones. His team found the
first dinosaur nests, when they were in the Gobi 70 years ago. I finally
got to go there about eight years ago. It was a long trip. You fly to
Beijing, then take a train for two days to Ulan Bator, the only big city
in Mongolia. From there you take a little plane to near the Flaming
Cliffs, then rent a jeep and drive. It is a beautiful fiery orange
canyonland. Sandstorms can blow for days. And in the sand you can still
find many dinosaur eggs and skeletons from oviraptors and protoceratops
and many other dinosaurs. It's definitely worth the trip! (Don Lessem)
Q: Did dinosaurs live in Kansas?
A: No dinosaurs in Kansas, I'm afraid, since the rocks near the surface
from the Cretaceous — the last dinosaur time — are from a time when
Kansas was under water. But there are some great pterosaur, or flying
reptile, bones, including the biggest ever, Quetzalcoatlus, which had a
40-foot wingspan, as big as a fighter plane! (Don Lessem)
Q: Were there ever any dinosaur fossils found in Wisconsin?
A: No dinosaurs in Wisconsin, since it was underwater during much of
dinosaur time. (Don Lessem)
Q: Where in the Midwest is the best place to find dinosaur bones
(besides the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago)?
A: The Midwest was underwater in much of dinosaur time so I actually
don't know of any good dinosaur-digging places there, I'm sorry to say.
I do hear there are many other fossils to be found, such as the world's
biggest mastodons in Nebraska, but these are from after the dinosaurs.
Kansas is good for dinosaur-aged sea and air reptiles. (Don Lessem)
Q: Do you know of any places in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut
specialize in dinosaurs?
A: There are dinosaur footprints in Kidde State Park in New Jersey, but
I've never been there. Aside from the American Museum of Natural
History, I don't know any other resources for you in New York.
Connecticut is full of fossil footprints, and Yale's Peabody Museum is a
great repository. Its emeritus paleontologist, John Ostrom, named
deinonychus and is still very active there. Dinosaur State Park south of
Hartford off Route 84 is very interesting, though temporarily closed for
repairs. (Don Lessem)
Q: How did you know to look for dinosaur fossils in Antarctica? How did
you know exactly where to look?
A: I actually did not go to Antarctica just to look for dinosaurs. I was
there looking for reptiles that lived early in the Triassic period,
before the first dinosaurs evolved. We had found many fossils of these
earlier reptiles on previous expeditions to Antarctica. However, we
always look in new places for different types of fossils and that is how
the dinosaurs were discovered. We search in areas where there are
sedimentary rocks that have been deposited by ancient rivers, because
that is where you usually find buried skeletons that have become
fossils. It was along an ancient river channel buried in mudstone that
we found the Antarctic dinosaurs. Now you know where to look, whether
you are in Antarctica or any place else. (Bill Hammer)
Q: Where are velociraptors found?
A: We find them in Mongolia, the other side of the planet from here. But
they also probably came to North America's West or had a very near
cousin here, we just don't know yet. That's the case with many dinosaurs
from the late Cretaceous period, about 80 million to 65 million years
ago. (Don Lessem)
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