North Texas seems to be a prime place for dinosaur discovery, with numerous fossils spotted through the years by professional paleontologists and avid collectors alike. Among the most recent finds: a prehistoric crocodile that apparently liked to eat dinosaurs.
The bones of a , a 20-foot-long crocodile estimated to have roamed North Texas some 95 million years ago, was found by and named after teenager Austin Motheral at the .
, director of the Perot Museum's Paleontology Lab, says this popular site at the northern edge of the city was once nothing more than a vacant, industrial lot.
鈥淏ut people used to like to go out there and wonder around,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a very active amateur fossil-hunting community in Dallas-Fort Worth area.鈥�
Interest in the area grew and the site became a subject of study. Multiple species of turtles, crocodiles and plant- and meat-eating dinosaurs have been found there, he says.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a matter of having the right sort of setting at the time, so you need a place where sediment is being deposited and you need things to die a lot,鈥� Tykoski said. 鈥淚f you get that combination of things鈥omething鈥檚 going to get buried and trapped.鈥�
But these ideal conditions do no good without people out in the field to find the fossils.
鈥淣inety-five times out of 100, it鈥檚 a rock, it鈥檚 a modern bone,鈥� Tykoski said. 鈥淏ut you get those little winners in there every now and then: 鈥楬ey, that鈥檚 a mammoth bone, that鈥檚 a jaw of a mastodon, that鈥檚 a hand claw from some sort of carnivorous dinosaur鈥� or something.鈥�
Tykoski credits the region鈥檚 enthusiasm to people's general love of 鈥渂ig, scary, toothy things.鈥� And for many people, especially kids, discovering fossils and learning about dinosaurs is an introduction to science.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a bigger world out there,鈥� he said.
Listen to the full interview with Tykoski in the audio player above.
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