Only a handful of dinosaur fossils have been discovered in Southern Arizona.
But don't let that fool you. Scientists speculate that during the Mesozoic era, the Prehistoric Pueblo was lousy with 'em.
After all, conditions were right.
"Tucson was at the end of a long rift valley reaching to the Gulf of Mexico, allowing the sea to extend up to about (present-day) I-10 at its time of maximum reach," says Richard Thompson, a local geologist and dinosaur enthusiast. "There were certainly rift lakes and rivers running into the sea, and we've found petrified wood from several kinds of trees, including conifers. This sort of habitat is perfect for dinosaurs."
Thompson knows a thing or two about Arizona and fossils. He actually discovered a fossilized dinosaur skeleton in Southern Arizona. The dinosaur now bears his name, the Sonorasaurus thompsoni.
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Thompson found the skeleton in 1994. The bones were in a remote canyon in southeastern Pima County.
Sonorasaurus facts
• At 55 feet in length, sonorasaurus was small for a brachiosaurus, which was one of the largest animals known to have walked the Earth.
• Like an elephant, sonorasaurus walked on its toes.
• It is the first known brachiosaur to have lived in the middle Cretaceous period in North America.
• Some scientists believe rocks found in the sonorasaurus' gizzard tell us the dinosaur traveled from the Whetstone Mountains to Roosevelt Lake in Central Arizona, likely on a yearly migration.
