The climate cooled and the seas withdrew until the Ice Age when Alabama was home to mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths. Major fossil discoveries in the state's history include the 1842 discovery of the early whale Basilosaurus, and a later 1961 discovery of more remains from the same species.
Nigersaurus had a delicate skull and an extremely wide mouth lined with teeth especially adapted for browsing plants close to the ground. This bizarre, long-necked dinosaur is characterized by its unusually broad, straight-edged muzzle tipped with more than 500 replaceable teeth.
A few land-based animals have been found, including a small relative of T. rex named for Montgomery County: Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis. Many of these fossils can be seen in the state's museums, including the Alabama Museum of Natural History, the McWane Science Center, and the Anniston Museum of Natural History.
Owen renamed it Zeuglodon (yoked tooth), yet the animal is still known as Basilosaurus because Harlan's name came first. Later discoveries of more complete fossils confirmed that the animal was a primitive whale that may have measured 70 feet in length.
Alabama, constituent state of the United States of America, admitted to the union in 1819 as the 22nd state.
Several 80-million-year-old fossils found in Alabama are from a species of sea turtle that is the oldest known member of the lineage that gave rise to all modern species of sea turtle, according to new research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
GEOLOGY AND HABITATGoing back 40 million years to the middle Eocene era, nearly all of Alabama was underwater, submerged under an ancient ocean that covered much more of the Earth than the modern seas.
Allosaurus was capable of killing healthy medium-sized sauropods (long-necked herbivores) or large sauropods, such as Apatosaurus, that were sick or injured. It was a fierce and aggressive predator, as indicated by the tooth marks discovered on the vertebrae of an Apatosaurus.
Actually, the state is the best spot to hunt dinosaur remains east of the Mississippi River. McWane's Alabama Dinosaurs exhibit includes fossils from: Appalachiosaurus, a tyrannosaur that averaged 22 feet long.
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| Location | County | Fossils |
|---|
| Arrow Bend | Autauga | Brachiopods,mollusks |
| House Bluff | Autauga | Inoceramus,Leidon bones sharks teeth,fine shells |
| Prattville | Autauga | shells |
| Alexanders Landing | Barbour | mollusks,crab claws,fish teeth |
Fantastic fossils
- Ammonites. Ammonites are related to the squids and octopuses you can see today, but they're all extinct - they died out at the same time as dinosaurs.
- Trilobites.
- Bivalves.
- Brachiopods.
- Sponges.
- Sea urchins.
- Shark teeth.
- Bones of dinosaurs and other reptiles.
Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent of Earth, including Antarctica but most of the dinosaur fossils and the greatest variety of species have been found high in the deserts and badlands of North America, China and Argentina.
Alabama Rockhounding Location Guide & Map
- The surface rocks of the northeastern part of the state are largely comprised of metamorphic rocks like schist, slate, phyllite, quartzite, and marble.
- The best places to collect rocks in Alabama include the areas around Tuscaloosa, Ashland, Rockford, Alexander City.
The 90-million-year-old petrified log sits outside Smith Hall. Petrified wood occurs across the state of Alabama, where it is often called “brilliant wood” because of its discovery near Brilliant and its lustrous sheen caused by cavities lined with quartz crystals.
What is the state flower of Alabama?
Crinoids are an ancient fossil group that first appeared in the seas of the Middle Cambrian, about 300 million years before dinosaurs. They flourished in the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic, and some survive to the present day.
