In 1966 a bulldozer operator excavating the site of a new state office building in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, noticed dinosaur tracks in the sandstone, and in 1968 the ground opened as Dinosaur State Park. It protects one of the largest dinosaur track sites in North America. A geodesic dome of 55,000 square feet covers about 500 tracks left on a sandy lakeshore at the start of the Jurassic, about 200 million years ago, and another 1,500 have been left buried to keep them safe. Most are Eubrontes, a track type named by the geologist Edward Hitchcock, 10 to 16 inches long and spaced 3.5 to 4.5 feet apart, probably made by a meat-eating dinosaur like Dilophosaurus. Slabs of other Connecticut Valley tracks include four-toed Otozoum prints that still show skin impressions. Outside, an arboretum grows about 250 kinds of conifer and as many plant families from the age of the dinosaurs as the New England climate allows.
About 500 Early Jurassic dinosaur tracks under a dome · Early Jurassic, about 200 mya
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
