MD: Dinosaurs invade Montpelier Mansion in new exhibit

From Gazette.net: Dinosaurs invade Montpelier Mansion in new exhibit
At the end of Mid-Atlantic Boulevard in South Laurel, there’s a piece of land that’s seen a lot of history — and prehistory.

Now the Laurel Dinosaur Park, the land once was part of the Snowden family’s estate and mined for iron ore in the 19th century. In an exhibit that opened Saturday and runs through April 29, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission has put some of the most interesting things dug up at the Dinosaur Park on display in Montpelier Mansion, once the Snowden family home.

The exhibit, Dinosaurs Invade the Mansion!, outlines the connection between the home-turned-museum and the fossils discovered at the park.

“It’s important for people to know that Dinosaur Park is really unique,” said Don Creveling, head of the archaeology at M-NCPPC. “It’s one of the only places on the East Coast with such a rich deposit of fossils so accessible.”

Fossils and information about the dinosaurs that made them are on display at the museum, including teeth from the long-necked sauropod Astrodon johnstoni, Maryland’s state dinosaur, and numerous bone fragments from other prehistoric creatures from the Cretaceous Period.

The carriage house on the property also is open for visitors and includes hands-on activities such as dinosaur art projects, name-your-own-dino activities and wooden dinosaur skeleton visitors can put together.

The exhibit also lists the names of more than 350 people who have unearthed fossils from the park.

The same forces of nature — floods on the many rivers and wetlands that wound through prehistoric Laurel — that trapped plant and animal matter in the area 110 million years ago also made the ground iron-rich, and the Snowdens made their fortune from the iron ore deposits, Creveling said.

“There’s a connection with the iron industry because it was in the iron mines where dinosaurs were first found,” Creveling said.

In 1858, miners discovered the first fossils in open pit mines about half a mile south of where the dinosaur park now is located. For more than 150 years, fossils have been found regularly in the area.

Opened in October 2009, the park now sees about 100 visitors at each of its open house events, which are conducted on the first and third Saturdays of each month, Creveling said.

After coming to the museum with his family to check out the dinosaur exhibit, David Wellington of Frederick said they would have to arrange a trip to the Dinosaur Park.

“I think it’s cool how they’re preserved,” said Wellington’s son, Caden, 11. He and his brother, Bryce, 7, said they would like to find dinosaur fossils.

Creveling hopes to see more families like the Wellingtons come out to the park to help paleontologists search the site for fossils, and he is working to raise funds to add amenities to the site, including a pavilion shelter, a storage shed for tools and sluiceway with running water so that visitors can more easily search through the clay for fossils.

Creveling said he hopes to see the project finished in the next year.