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Introduction
Not everyone is lucky enough to be Bucky Derflinger, the youngest person
ever to find a Tyrannosaurus rex. When Bucky was a fourth-grader
he found his first fossilized T. rex bone and took it to school.
His South Dakota teacher told him it was not a fossilized dinosaur bone.
It's a good thing that he did not give up looking for dinosaurs, because
a few years later he found the only teenage T. rex. Today the dinosaur
named for Bucky is on display in Dinosphere
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Modeling clay is used to make an imprint
of the fossilized bone. From this impression a rubber mold can
be made. Many copies or replicas can be made from the mold.
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Why aren't dinosaurs
found in Indiana?
Students often ask this question. Dinosaurs probably lived in Indiana
long ago, but several major changes in climate have occurred in this
area since the end of the Cretaceous. Large glaciers scoured, scraped
and eroded the surface and bedrock of Indiana, where dinosaur bones
may have been deposited. When the climate changed the melted glaciers
produced tremendous quantities of water that moved sediments, soil,
rocks and fossils out of the area. Fragile fossils cannot survive the
strong natural forces that have shaped the Hoosier state. The youngest
bedrock in Indiana, from the Carboniferous Period, 360 - 286 million
years ago (mya), is much older than the Mesozoic Era fossil beds of
the dinosaurs, 248 - 65 mya. Thus fossilized dinosaur bones have not
been found in Indiana.
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Each layer of dirt at the Bucky site may
contain clues about life in the Cretaceous Period.
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