In 2007, in a Montgomery County creek bank, a new dinosaur was discovered, and the world’s attention turned to Alabama.
You can see Eotrochodon orientalis for yourself at Birmingham’s McWane Science Center. Fossil remains of the 83-million-year-old duck-billed herbivore are displayed in the paleontology lab, a working lab that features half a million specimens ranging from tiny mouse teeth to enormous whale vertebrae.
Visitors who explore the lab can expect to find bones of Ice Age mammals or fossilized shells on the tables. The next big paleontological discovery could be here, too.
If not, it’s quite possibly buried somewhere in Alabama.
“I can tell you we’re the number one state in the U.S. for fossils, without a shadow of a doubt, even though we haven’t done the research yet,” says Jun Ebersole, director of collections at McWane Science Center. He cites three reasons: more layers of rock on the surface than any other state; most of these rocks are sedimentary; and Alabama’s geologic history as a shallow marine environment—specifically, a diverse coastal shelf.
“You can break down geologic time into three major eras: dinosaur age, before the dinosaurs and after the dinosaurs,” Ebersole says. “Dinosaur-age stuff is in the Black Belt. Everything above that is before the dinosaurs; everything below the Black Belt is after the dinosaurs.”
“For the best geological tour in the country, start up in Huntsville, get on 65 and drive all the way down to Mobile,” Ebersole says. “For every one mile you drive south, you’ll move one million years forward in time. It’s the entire history of life on one highway.”
That history encompasses far more than dinosaurs.
A tour of the paleontology lab reveals the remains of a family of giant ground sloths found in a north Alabama cave, the footprints of an enormous lizard preserved in shale from the Union Chapel Mine site in Walker County, and gigantic vertebrae from the Basilosaurus cetoides (Alabama’s state fossil).
Still, the dinosaurs are what most visitors come to see, and Ebersole, an expert on prehistoric sharks, appreciates the significance of the ones found in our state. That Eotrochodon orientalis, for instance, represents not only a new species, but also a new genus. The large crest on its bill sets it apart from any other found anywhere else in the world.
Alabama’s Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis (Alabama Tyrannosaur) is a primitive T. rex with arms about twice as long as those of a T. rex from the western U.S. It had a smaller head and three claws on each hand instead of two. These bones come from the most complete Appalachiosaurus ever discovered and the most complete tyrannosaur ever found in the eastern half of the country.
“Out west, they argue about the size of their T. rexes,” Ebersole says. “Here, we’re finding new dinosaurs altogether. Every dinosaur we have enough of to name is actually a new species.”
“If you want to study these unique dinosaurs…you have to come to our side of the country.”
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