Paleontology in Maryland
The ancient marine life of Maryland included brachiopods and bryozoans while horsetails and scale trees grew on land.
[4] For a 30 million year interval spanning the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic boundary, the Culpeper Basin was an extensive lake.
[3] Maryland and Washington, D.C. are the only places where Early Cretaceous dinosaur remains are known to have been preserved east of the Mississippi River.
[8] The famed Chesapeake group exposes along the coast of Calvert County is known for its diverse Marine Mammal fauna.
It is known for its fragility and distinctive color, and recently was discovered to hold remnants of the original proteins from the living animal.
Clams, oysters, mussels, and snails lived in these higher waters and were preserved in the eastern part of the state.
[1] Around this time a cavity in the limestone composing an Allegany County hill served as a death trap for many unwary animals over an extended period.
The intermediate latitude-type fauna was characterized by a badger, a variety of bears, deer, a mastodon, otter, and a puma-like animal.
The mammals more typical of northern habitats included elk, a fisher, hare, lemming, mink, jumping mouse, muskrat, pika, porcupine, long-tailed shrew, red squirrel, and wolverine.
Also conspicuous is the absence of many kinds of animal that are common in the Pleistocene deposits in the United States like bison, camels, giant ground sloths, grizzly bears, and musk oxen.
[1] The Lenape or Delaware people have lived in Maryland and told myths likely influenced by the theropod dinosaur tracks common in the area.
[10] Folklorist Adrienne Mayor has mused that the depiction of the grandfather of the Monsters in the Delaware myth resembles modern portrayals of Tyrannosaurus rex as a fearless, superlative predator.
[11] The Delaware also had a fossil related custom where the women of the tribe collected "uki rocks" which were imprinted with the tracks of small dinosaurs.
[12] In 1859, state agricultural chemist Philip T. Tyson discovered the first dinosaur fossils of the Arundel Formation in an iron pit at Bladensburg, Prince George's County.
[15] While on this expedition, Hatcher discovered an iron mine on a farm near Muirkirk owned by a man named William Coffin.
[17] Hatcher recovered hundreds of bones and teeth, although the remains were poorly preserved, disarticulated and often from animals who weren't fully grown.
[20] Bibbins began prospecting these sites and quickly amassed a sizable collection of dinosaur bones, although he described the excavation work as "attended by much difficulty".
[21] The only known dinosaur footprints in Maryland were discovered the next year in 1895 by James A. Mitchell in a Frederick County quarry north of Emmitsburg.
[22] Early in the twentieth century, Maryland was home to one of the most significant Pleistocene mammal discoveries in American history.
In 1912, workers digging in a cave for a railroad construction project about four miles west of Cumberland in Allegany County uncovered and incidentally destroyed many fossils in the course of their labor.
[21] After J. W. Gidley's 1931 death, his son continued his father's work researching the fossils found in the Allegany County Cave.
Most of the animals were relatively small and some Pleistocene life forms common in other parts of the country were strangely absent.
