Dinosaur jawbone found in Laurel

A 7-year-old boy from Elkridge has found a fossil at a dinosaur park in Laurel that appears to date back about 116 million years.

Aidan Isenstadt found the approximately 1 1/2 inch jawbone fragment last month while fossil hunting.

Matthew Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, says the fragment is part of a juvenile meat-eating dinosaur. He believes the find is the first jawbone from a meat-eating dinosaur ever found in Maryland. It’s also believed to be the first find from the Early Cretaceous period anywhere in the Eastern United States.

This isn’t the first time a young person has found a fossil at the park. Almost as soon as the park opened last October, 9-year-old Gabrielle Block of Annandale, found a dinosaur tailbone.

-- Associated Press