If You’re Into Dinosaur Hunting, This SEMO Find is a BIG Deal

Apparently, if you're in the business of hunting for dinosaur bones, this is a very, very big deal.

Get our free mobile app

The news came from southeast Missouri last week that such a hunt at a dig in Bollinger County, west of Cape Girardeau, had yielded a mother lode of dinosaur bones and other fossils.

This latest find is a specimen of something called Parrosaurus missouriensis.

Those who know this stuff say this particular dinosaur was a plant-eater, had a duck bill and grew to about 35 feet long.

One of the leaders of this dig, University of Minnesota Paleontologist Peter Makovicky, believes this find is just the beginning. "We actually have something that's probably a mass death locality, where we have a herd of dinosaurs dying and being sort of buried together, and individuals of different ages."

When those of us who know nothing about this kind of thing think of such a dig, we think of finding a bone here or a part of a skull there.

But on this dig, there was one chunk of remains that weighed 2,500 pounds and had to be hoisted from the site by a crane.

Experts are saying to have this many dinosaurs in one area this far east is highly unusual. These kinds of discoveries mostly happen in the Great Plains.

Along with dinosaur bones, remains have been found of massive turtles, prehistoric fish and crocodiles that could have been up to 50 feet long.