How deep are the dinosaurs

[BH]

Hi.

I'm curious about something after being asked about this by a little cousin.

I live 50 miles right south of Dallas TX. Is there a resource I can use that will tell me how far you have to dig to get to the time of the dinosaurs and find their fossils, ect?

 

[Politesse]

It's not about how deep the fossils are, it's where the right layers are exposed on the surface for you to find, no digging required! Not sure where exactly you are, but if it isn't a far drive to Glen Rose, Dinosaur Valley State Park would be a great place to start your paleontological journey. It preserves a nice stretch of Cretaceous shoreline, in which dinosaur footprints are often visible, including arguably the first sauropod tracks ever to be firmly identified as such back in the late 30s.

Only $8 to get in.

Or if 50 miles south is code for Hillsboro, you have a pretty cool little museum right there in town: https://texasthroughtime.org/visit-us/ Admission is free, and though their focus is on the local Permian fossils, if your cousin likes dinosaurs they probably won't turn down a Dimetredon. I know I sure wouldn't.

Driving the other way, another case of not exactly dinosaurs, but the Waco mammoth site is very well known to paleontologists, and is now a national monument.

Or if you don't want to drive anywhere at all, check out the interactive map at https://txpub.usgs.gov/txgeology/ to find your backyard and figure out what formations you have all around you. There is no shortage of beautiful Cretaceous deposits anywhere in your region.

 

[Thomas II]

 

[BH]

It's not about how deep the fossils are, it's where the right layers are exposed on the surface for you to find, no digging required! Not sure where exactly you are, but if it isn't a far drive to Glen Rose, Dinosaur Valley State Park would be a great place to start your paleontological journey. It preserves a nice stretch of Cretaceous shoreline, in which dinosaur footprints are often visible, including arguably the first sauropod tracks ever to be firmly identified as such back in the late 30s.

Only $8 to get in.

Or if 50 miles south is code for Hillsboro, you have a pretty cool little museum right there in town: https://texasthroughtime.org/visit-us/ Admission is free, and though their focus is on the local Permian fossils, if your cousin likes dinosaurs they probably won't turn down a Dimetredon. I know I sure wouldn't.

Driving the other way, another case of not exactly dinosaurs, but the Waco mammoth site is very well known to paleontologists, and is now a national monument.

Or if you don't want to drive anywhere at all, check out the interactive map at https://txpub.usgs.gov/txgeology/ to find your backyard and figure out what formations you have all around you. There is no shortage of beautiful Cretaceous deposits anywhere in your region.

I've been to Glen Rose several times and seen the dinosaur tracks in the river. Even visited Carl Baugh's creation museum a few times for toots and giggles.

A lot of folks don't know it but there is an extinct volcano right outside Waco. Most of what is left is on a large stretch of private property. It was a suboceanic volcano and was active when this part of the country (I'm in Corsicana) was a vast shallow inland sea.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Hi.

I'm curious about something after being asked about this by a little cousin.

I live 50 miles right south of Dallas TX. Is there a resource I can use that will tell me how far you have to dig to get to the time of the dinosaurs and find their fossils, ect?

Ancient Earth

Earth looked very different long ago. Search for addresses across 750 million years of Earth's history.

dinosaurpictures.org

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hi.

I'm curious about something after being asked about this by a little cousin.

I live 50 miles right south of Dallas TX. Is there a resource I can use that will tell me how far you have to dig to get to the time of the dinosaurs and find their fossils, ect?

"Deep" implies that material keeps being added. Material from where????

The reality is that some places add, some places subtract and on geologic time those change. We find fossils when an area that previously had addition now has subtraction that brings it back to how it was X years ago.

 

[starwater]

You need to look at a geologic map of the area. Look for formation that are Jurassic and Triassic in age and go there.

 

[TomC]

You need to look at a geologic map of the area. Look for formation that are Jurassic and Triassic in age and go there.

I'm no geologist. But I suspect BH has a similar situation to mine.
Most of what is now central USA was the bottom of the sea through the dinosaur era. A warm and shallow sea, where few of what large vertebrates lived then fossilized because they decomposed quickly and thoroughly. The limestone bed beneath Indiana is very thick. Lots of sea creatures, going back to trilobites. But not dinosaurs.

Doubtless Texas is different, if only because it's big. But it's probably a matter of exactly where you are looking in Texas, not how far down.
Tom

 

[starwater]

You need to look at a geologic map of the area. Look for formation that are Jurassic and Triassic in age and go there.

I'm no geologist. But I suspect BH has a similar situation to mine.
Most of what is now central USA was the bottom of the sea through the dinosaur era. A warm and shallow sea, where few of what large vertebrates lived then fossilized because they decomposed quickly and thoroughly. The limestone bed beneath Indiana is very thick. Lots of sea creatures, going back to trilobites. But not dinosaurs.

Doubtless Texas is different, if only because it's big. But it's probably a matter of exactly where you are looking in Texas, not how far down.
Tom

yes during the Cretaceous.

Go to the USGS website and look up the geologic map. Locate the geologic formations that may be on the surface or in outcrops (road cuts are good places to look for outcrops) from the Triassic and Jurassic. You may find something. You could also take a trip to Dinosaur National Park in Utah. The fossils are everywhere there lying around.

 

[Politesse]

You need to look at a geologic map of the area. Look for formation that are Jurassic and Triassic in age and go there.

I'm no geologist. But I suspect BH has a similar situation to mine.
Most of what is now central USA was the bottom of the sea through the dinosaur era. A warm and shallow sea, where few of what large vertebrates lived then fossilized because they decomposed quickly and thoroughly. The limestone bed beneath Indiana is very thick. Lots of sea creatures, going back to trilobites. But not dinosaurs.

Doubtless Texas is different, if only because it's big. But it's probably a matter of exactly where you are looking in Texas, not how far down.
Tom

Nope, Texas is a fantastic state for dinosaur fans! Yes, there was a Cretaceous seaway, but it ran right through the middle of the modern state, and life along its margins was abundant. The situation is even better on Central Texas, because a series of three massive plateaus were thrust upward in blocks during the Neogene, throwing delicious Mesozoic strata right up to eye level, to be helpfully eroded right into the hands of curious fossil collectors. Some of the first paleontological sites ever explored in the US are in Texas, and many of these are a short drive from the major metropolitan regions. No coincidence, as the same events that created those exposures also made modern Texas inhabitable, upthrusting a massive aquifer from which much of the civic water supply derives, and the clays and salt domes that provide the state with two of its largest industries. Oil states are never geologically dull. Once you start exploring West Texas, you start hitting the Llano Uplift Zone and things get really complicated -nearly every time period between the deep pre-Cambrian and the present is exposed somewhere within the chaos. A most interesting state, if you like rocks.

 

[BH]

We find a lot of prehistoric remains close (less than 50 feet) around here all the time. The timeline being less than a hundred thousand years. About twenty years ago the county judge was digging a new cattle pond on his property and he found a mammoth.

 

[Elixir]

I’d like … some day … to wander around the Hell Creek formation, where lots of Cretaceous fossils are weathering out yearly. Mammoths are so… last week.