Very cool Maryland dinosaur talk tonight

I know, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Maryland weather. But we don't have a science blog anymore, so this is the best I can do. Maybe including the word "cool" in the header will justify its placement here.

Anyone who has even a passing interest in dinosaurs, and especially Maryland dinosaurs, has heard of Ray Stanford (left), the amateur College Park paleontologist (or, more precisely, paleoichnologist) who has amassed an extraordinary collection of dinosaur footprints he's plucked from Maryland streambeds, mostly in the Washington area.

The Sun has written about him on several occasions. His collections have been examined by some of the top paleontologists in the country and judged to be of significant value to science.

Ray has developed a Power Point presentation and lecture on his work, and will be delivering it this evening at a Maryland Natural History Society meeting in Overlea, in Baltimore County. He also plans to bring along about 100 pounds of rocks bearing the footprints of a variety of dinosaurs that walked in Maryland mud during the Cretaceous period, some 112 million years ago.

The event begins at 7 p.m. at 6908 Belair Road, Overlea, on Route 1 about a mile south of the Beltway.

Among the finds he will lug to the meeting is what Ray describes as the world's largest pterosaur footprint, "It is both huge and beautiful, and is of incredible significance to any study of pterosaurian evolution, because the track maker was at least as large as the biggest known Quetzalcoatlus specimen," he says.

And by the way, the weather for the lecture tonight will be clear and cool, with temperatures dropping toward the 40s. So, this was about the weather after all.

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