New Threats to Arundel Dino Site 2002! (LONG)

[trlipka@directvinternet.com]

Hello All,

Belive it or not, today, 8 April 2002, I finally- FINALLY was able to take
advantage of weather and time to go to prospecting at the dino site. It was a
beautiful afterenoon. After a cold and cloudy morning by 1PM the sun had burned
through and temps rose to the mid 60's F. So I took a half day off  from work to
make maximum use of the extended daylight hours to visit the quarry. 

It seems that every time I go there I run into _someone_ who has ideas for my
site other than what I want. Today was no different! 

And while prospecting (after about 3 hours) I was considering whether or not if 
I
was going to resume my "Arundel Field Notes" on the DML when some movement 
caught
my eye just over the hill. It was someone with a strap on GPS surveying system
surveying what I at first thought were the boundaries of the site for the Dino
park folks. Remember them? The very Quasi- state governmental types many of you
were kind enough to bombard with emails and snail mails to stop them from 
turning
the site into a kiddie park?? And thanks to Tom Holtz and AP reporter Tom
Stuckey, we were able to make those folks "see the light" so to speak. I knew
that all we had really won was a brief reprieve  but it was a start. Anyway...

Once the surveyor drew near enough for me to challenge his presence there I was
shocked to learn the NOT only was he NOT surveying for the Dino Park but that he
was surveying for a PROPOSED 6 or 8 lane HIGHWAY- the controversial Inter-county
Connector (ICC), the center line of which virtually runs right through the 
center
of the Arundel Clay on the outcrop at my site! In other words, the mediuan of 
the
highway cuts nearly parallel to strike of the outcrop and will obliterate , to
the exact spot where I first discovered it, the mammal site along with about 80%
of the entire known and extended outcrop! While I was aware that the State
Highway Admin was going ahead with planning for the ICC and that the proposed
route was to come very close by, I had no idea it would literally roll over top
of the last and best early Cretaceous site on the entire East Coast of North
America!

I emphasize that this is "a proposed route". It is very controversial in that as
proposed, the new highway would cut through some of what little WET LANDS are
still untouched by development in order to join two overcrowded major highways
running basically N-S between Baltimore and Washington. Fortunately or
unfortunately, most of the Potomac Formation (and Arundel Clay) outcrops
similarly are found in these areas and ALL of the sites known at the turn of the
19th century are gone; Filled in for strip malls, roads and housing developments
which clutter the B-W corridor and encroach to the very property boundary of the
quarry! Aside form the revelation that the ICC wants to cut through my site, I
was hoping they would cut through some fresh outcrops and _expand_ , not
contract, outcrop availability. But I guess I'm asking for too much eh? Other
proposed routes have their detractors as well and the whole thing has become a
poltical football! 

The surveyor, actually an environmental scientist was surprised to learn about
the importance of this site as far as paleontology is concerned so I gave him 
the
nickel tour emphasizing the paleoenvironmental and paleocological aspects of my
research. Luckily I had a few fossils of dino, plant, coprolite(?) and bivalve
that helped illustrate my point. We exchanged cards and went about our separate
buisness. I finished my prospecting finding several more cones, 1 medium sized
croc tooth, a fragment of turtle shell, and a fragmentart nodosaur tooth (the 
2nd
for today!) in about an hour and a half. By this time I had prospected the 
entire
site in grid fashon and turned my attention to the survey flags which now litter
the site in every color of the spectrum, shot the azimuth of the propsed road
(N63E and the strike of the outcrop (N38E),ala Brunton,  and paced off the width
of just the "northbound" part at 34 paces (~170ft at my pace count)whose
intersectinon is literally at the downstream limit if my site in the middle of
the Arundel,  and determined very quickly that the entire site will have to be
blasted away in order for this road to come through!

This is worse than the threat of the Dino-Kiddie Park! However, a sick, twisted
irony ( I love those kinds of irony)  that may yet save me are WET LANDS survey
markers that also abut the hillside and much of the right of way of the proposed
road. ASSUMING that the Gov abides by its own ECO laws (which history
demonstrates to the contrary) the state should be looking elsewhere. We'll see.
Furthermore, and still more twisted, is what appears to be a classic example of
governmental left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing as the
aformentioned dino park problem dealt with bureacrats from MDE and DNR much as
the State Highway Admin has to deal with the very same people! So someone 
screwed
up. Not to worry, when I am done, EVERYBODY will know! ;-)

Suffice it to say that while I am very concerned, I am NOT asking for the
assmbled mind to start writing and emailing. Should you wish to, please do but I
won't spamm the lists with entreaties for letters this time. I plan to inform 
the
landowner (who does not know this) and my colleagues in this area and try to 
work
it from there but I am OUT of time, leave, and resources to mount a major
campaign like last fall's epsiode. Wish me luck, lest the site become the
supporting substrate for a multi lane highway!

Thought you'd might be interested.

Cheers,
Tom

Thomas R. Lipka
Geobiological Research
2733 Kildaire Drive
Baltimore, Md. 21234 USA
Online Papers:
http://www.glue.umd.edu/~lfsxdth/neoceratopsian/index.html (Ceratopsian paper)
http://www.glue.umd.edu/~lfsxdth/lipka/theropod.html (Theropod Paper)