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| Dinosaur Name: |
Nodosauridae indet. |
| Name Meaning: |
Not yet determined member of the nodosaur family |
| When it lived: |
100 million years ago, Early Cretaceous Period |
| Location of Dig: |
Fossil Creek Community inside the FW City Limits |
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North Beach Street in Fort Worth had seen its share of amateur fossil hunters by the time John Maurice and his son Johnny showed up in the spring of 1989. The most common find for visitors was sharks teeth, but 12-year-old Johnny came across something unusual. As the two worked the ground to unearth the discovery, John joked that it looked like his son had found the remains of someone’s Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner. Even still, they were diligent and managed to unearth parts of every area of a baby nodosaur’s body. Their find was then turned over to the Shuler Museum of Paleontology at Southern Methodist University.
With careful study of the skeleton, the SMU team was able to learn the story of what happened to the dinosaur in the weeks and months after it died. Fossils of sea creatures found with the bones indicated that the baby had fallen into a shallow sea. Marks on some bones showed that the baby’s soft body parts had been gnawed on by scavengers, quite likely sharks and crabs. This left a cleaned skeleton on the sea floor, which oyster shells began to grow upon. By carefully measuring the sizes of the oysters and by considering how long it takes modern oysters to grow, the SMU team determined that the fossil oysters grew for a month or two before the skeleton was finally buried.
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| Dinosaur Name: |
Pawpawsaurus campbelli |
| Pronunciation: |
(paw-paw-SAWR-us CAM-bul-eye) |
| Name Meaning: |
Paw Paw Formation lizard |
| When it lived: |
100 million years ago, Early Cretaceous Period |
| Location of Dig: |
Fossil Creek Community inside the FW City Limits |
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Just a few years later in the same vicinity as the baby nodosaur find, 19-year-old Cameron Campbell made a discovery of his own. An employee of the Fort Worth Zoo at the time, Cameron was hunting for fossils when he came across a beautifully preserved skull encrusted with rock and oyster shells.
Cameron gave the skull to Southern Methodist University. Scientists there confirmed that, like the baby skeleton found at the same site, this specimen was a four-footed, plant-eating nodosaur with an armored body similar to an armadillo.
This type of dinosaur seemed to like living near the shore. Millions of years ago, Beach Street was actually the shore of the Paw Paw Sea, part of the Western Interior Seaway that divided the continent of North America in half.
The SMU team determined that this type of nodosaur, which was about the size of a Volkswagon Beetle, was unique in the world. A graduate student wrote a species description paper, which was submitted for peer review and accepted for publication. The new species was given the official name of Pawpawsaurus campbelli; the first part of the name originating from the rock layers where the skull was found, and the latter part honoring the young man who found it.
While paleontologists suspect that the baby nodosaur was likely the same species as the Pawpawsaurus campbelli, its bones were not formed well enough to know for sure.
There aren’t many American cities that can claim a new dinosaur. The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History is honored to exhibit the Pawpawsaurus campbelli skull and the partial skeleton of the Nodosauridae indet in their own hometown.
Photo Album:
View photos all 15 photos of the Fossil Creek excavation at a larger scale.
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