Charles E. Coffin, of Muirkirk, Md., has lately placed at the disposal of the Woman’s College Museum for study and description, in connection with other collections from the same region, a remarkable saurian tooth, recently exhumed from his iron mines in Prince George county. It measures three inches in length, and the herbivorous dinosaur to which it belonged was not less than twenty-five feet in length. The dentine of the tooth, with its beautiful polish and characteristic transverse markings, is almost perfectly preserved, and the delicate serrations of its edges are as sharply defined as when the reptile was imbedded in the lignitic clays of the Potomac formations. The mine from which the tooth was excavated is the same as that from which Professor O. C. Marsh, of Yale, several years ago obtained a considerable collection. These remains were so highly prized by this distinguished investigator that several men and an engineer were employed for a number of weeks in making excavations for the same, says Baltimore American. Though the Maryland dinosaurs were huge animals in comparison with reptiles now living, they are but dwarfs beside some of the gigantic species which inhabited the western North America in jurassic time. During a recent visit to the Woman’s college, Professor Marsh remarked that one of the fossil species he discovered in the west could stand on the lawn in front of Goucher hall and eat with comfort from the roof. This “terrible lizard” was 100 feet long, and the largest animal ever known to inhabit the earth.
[tags]Ann Arbor Register, August, 1895[/tags]