Hunt for Dinosaurs

Find any dinosaur fossils lately? Maybe you're not looking hard enough. After all, they're all around us. Prehistoric teeth, tracks, and to a lesser extent, bones are surprisingly common in parts of the District, Virginia and Maryland. The corridor between Washington and Baltimore, known among paleontologists as "Dinosaur Alley," produced the second dino fossil ever discovered on the East Coast.

If you can't hunt for these relics yourself, you can visit dinosaur exhibits in the area or tap the expertise of local paleontologists to learn about the legendary creatures that literally romped through our back yards and today enthrall parents and kids alike.

"These things were real honest-to-God monsters that tromped the Earth," says Robert E. Weems, geologist-paleontologist at the Reston-based U.S. Geological Survey. "But they're all dead, so you don't have to worry about one coming in to eat you."

-- Barbara J. Saffir

DINOSAUR LAND. Kids devour this 1960s-era theme park and its nearly four dozen kitschy fiberglass dino sculptures. Where else can you stroll under a pteranodon (a flying reptile) in a pine forest? Or watch life-size models of a megalosaur battling an apatosaurus? You'll also spy T-Rex on one of the earthen mounds along the winding gravel path. Some unusual dinos include the parrot-like psittacosaurus and a polacanthus with rows of spikes on its back.

University of Maryland paleontologist Thomas R. Holtz Jr. visited the space as a tyke. "My parents tell me I wanted to be a dinosaur when I grew up," he says. "Since that wasn't going to happen, I decided to study them."

3848 Stonewall Jackson Hwy., White Post, Va. $5, ages 2-10 $4, younger than 2 free. 540-869-2222. http://www.dinosaurland.com/ .

FREDERICKSBURG AREA MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER . You can meet Virginia's own syntarsus dinosaur in this growing museum. The 3- to 4-foot-tall theropod (recently renamed megapnosaurus) gobbled up prey with up to 80 teeth. The model is depicted with a bloody, beheaded reptile in its claws. "The boys love this because it's gross," says museum curator Mary Helen Dellinger.

Visitors also can touch dino tracks from a Culpeper County quarry. "It's to pique people's interest to look for dinosaurs in Virginia," says Nicholas Fraser, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Virginia Museum of Natural History, which lent the museum this temporary exhibit entitled "Treasures From the Triassic."

Other local treasures include a 115-million-year-old fossilized redwood tree from nearby Quantico that you can touch, and casts of 230-million-year-old herrerasaurus and eoraptor footprints. Children can make rubbings of fossil tracks and match pictures on a magnetic board to learn about geologic time.

Through Sept. 4. 907 Princess Anne St., Fredericksburg. $5, students $1, ages younger than 6 free. 540-371-3037. http://www.famcc.org/ .

MARYLAND SCIENCE CENTER. Believe it or not, Maryland has an official state dinosaur and this is the only place where you can gawk at a life-size model of it. The 67-foot-long Astrodon johnstoni peers out behind a four-story glass wall at this harborside museum. The long-neck giant seems unaware that an acrocanthosaurus is about to rip its tail apart with its killer curved teeth.