95 million year old crocodile unearthed... by a kid with a tractor!

I'm off playing "shovelbum" this week at the Arlington Archosaur site. We had an emergency call for volunteers because this Sunday, a 16 year old who was helping grade the site noticed bone sticking up from one spot he'd just graded and called over the team. He'd found the vertebra of a 95 million year old croc.

So I was out with the team today (and tomorrow), digging in the dirt, looking for croc bits and finding croc and turtle bits (this one may have also died in the fire that killed the dinosaur at this site (yes, we can tell this is how the dino died.) We had news crews (because the news hit big in the area), but a fairly small team.

It was a hot dig. Someone brought us Taco Bell for lunch, but mostly it was 5-7 hours of scrape and brush. When I looked at the temperature indicator on my car, it reported that the temperature was 109... sure felt like it, too.

Anyway, much fun it was. Here's some of the news stories:
www.dallasnews.com...

www.sciencedaily.com...

metrocolumnistsblog.dallasnews.com... (the picture, however, shows us at an earlier phase of the dig. That's not the spot where we were digging for the croc.)

There's some vids on it, but I couldn't get one I liked. I think I'm in the background of one.

thats awesome that you got to be there when something like that was found!

reply to post by Byrd



Nice find.

Not to pick on you specifically but I highly doubt the dating on finds such like this. Just like I doubt the distances given for galatic objects. Yeah I know they are grounded in science, but one has to wonder how accurate the science really is. How can you tell that some light arriving to our planet originates from say 100 light years away? Or that a certian carbon content means something is 95 million years old. I find it incredulous that science can spout out these numbers with a straight face.

How much credibility do you give to such dating?

It would be interesting to see what that area looked like back then, I guess we can only imagine. Any close bodies of water there anyway?

I would love to find a site like that in my backyard or farm. Another thread mentioned some bizarre crossbreed or hybrid of an unknown species. Always fascinating.

[edit on 15-7-2009 by aleon1018]

They can’t wait for temperate weather. Although the site’s owner, the Huffines Group, has given them an extension to keep digging until next May, the property is eventually scheduled to be developed. After that, any bones still undiscovered will be out of reach.

I hate hearing stuff like that.
Sure, good and all with progress, to be sure.
But important stuff gets buried under these buildings. Similar structures are ruining the beach front.


Don't suppose you snuck into the background of the video at some point eh Byrd?

Wow Im sure Steve Irwin would love to have been there, he loves crocodiles so much. he was a great animal lover and did a great show!

Thats awesome you were there for that!

I have always loved Dinosaurs, they are like kittens to me for some odd reason. Great find indeed!!

Awesome find! I think this is soooo cool! Now that whole dating thing, ehh, maybe not so much. I have trouble believing any "carbon" dating in as much as it has to be inexact by its very nature. But, date away, I say.

They have a man made full skeleton of one of these in the Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg, TN....It's gigantic. Lived with the dino's and ate them too.

Is it possible, or does it already exist - a world map marking the places where dinosaur skeletal remains have been found?

reply to post by Byrd


You get to do these things? Oh I am so envious... I wish I could get involved in such things.

Even in 42c heat. That's like a warm breeze in the WA summer shade

Awesome, I've always envied that job.

Originally posted by mblahnikluver
Thats awesome you were there for that!

I have always loved Dinosaurs, they are like kittens to me for some odd reason. Great find indeed!!

I always look at crows and magpies around here and imagine what large featherless versions of them would be like. So vocal, animated, articulate and yet we never really pay much attention to them.

I can imagine a large creature acting just like a crow. And they notice us if we notice them. Amazing, intelligent animals. You can speak to them, almost. Or they're just going "Another stupid human, caww wheres that empty KFC bucket gone, it had half a drumstick left in it.."

Thats a great find! Imagine the kids amazement about finding such a discovery. When I was younger, I was on digs and such, but it was much, much newer, i.e. native american campgrounds, firepits, 2000-5000 years ago. Lots of fun. Always wished I had stayed in the archealogical field.

So, do you know the approximate timeline of the fire that killed the dinosaur? Wonder if the croc was just eating leftovers or if they were both killed at once.

I haven't researched it much yet, but here's a theory. Could that fire be caused around the same time that the Yucatan Penninsula got hit with that massive meteorite? Maybe from the fallout? Just a thought...

Cool thread , I've always loved dinosaurs and such myself, just goes to show that modern day crocodiles are just as ancient as those extinct reptiles

To the person I'm replying to ,(mblahnikluver)
have you ever seen a real crocodile and went out on a lake system full of them ?
I doubt you'd think of them as pussy cats if you did lol
scary buggers if you ask me

[edit on 16-7-2009 by Takka]

You say the croc died in the same fire as the Dino that's being un-earthed in the area?

Any chance this may have come from the Chicxulub Crater?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/14e5a30da951.jpg[/atsimg]

It would appear the critters died approximately 30 million years before the impact. Any thoughts?

Originally posted by sligtlyskeptical
Or that a certian carbon content means something is 95 million years old. I find it incredulous that science can spout out these numbers with a straight face.

How much credibility do you give to such dating?

Lots, because I've **worked** with the dating process. I'm not someone who's just heard about it and heard a few things from both sides. I have "hands on" and "argument checking" experience.

Originally posted by tyranny22
You say the croc died in the same fire as the Dino that's being un-earthed in the area?

Any chance this may have come from the Chicxulub Crater?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/14e5a30da951.jpg[/atsimg]

It would appear the critters died approximately 30 million years before the impact. Any thoughts?

This one has nothing to do with Chicxulub. We're in Texas, and the fire was one of a regular set of fires (they had wildfires ever since there was plant material to burn. I'll do more detail later, but we've found turtles whose remains are mixed in with charred wood (very different from other kinds of preserved wood (the roots of the trees, which didn't burn.) I admit I raised my eyebrows when they said the hadrosaur died in a fire until I was part of the team that recovered a turtle shell from the rock... then I saw for myself the evidence of the big fire.

(will go into more detail later this evening or tomorrow... I'm off to the digsite in about 10 minutes.)

Originally posted by Ha`la`tha
reply to post by Byrd

 

You get to do these things? Oh I am so envious... I wish I could get involved in such things.

You can! Anyone can!

Look around for your local paleontological/anthropological/historical society and join them. There's lots of preservation work going on, and much of it (like this site) relies on volunteers to get out there and do grunt work. You'll work with people with an amazing amount of knowledge (the kid who found the bones could easily name off the probable species (deinosuchus) and knew the correct terminology for the bone names. He was finding a lot of baby croc teeth yesterday.

Awesome Byrd! I live in Mansfield so I'll have to drive up and check it out hehe.

I've been out to Glen Rose before which is really cool so we know that the area was very active during earlier times.

Originally posted by Chemley
Awesome find! I think this is soooo cool! Now that whole dating thing, ehh, maybe not so much. I have trouble believing any "carbon" dating in as much as it has to be inexact by its very nature. But, date away, I say.

We don't carbon date these things. Carbon dating is only good to about 50,000 years. Things older than that are dated differently.