Dinosaurs in California Dinosaurs in California Very few
dinosaur fossils have been found in California. Why? Becuase
during the time when dinosaurs lived, most of California was
covered by the ocean, and any sediments that accumulated in the
areas that were dry land have since eroded away. Why do we find
dinosaur fossils in areas that were ocean? They may have drowned
in a river and been carried out to sea by currents, as happens
sometimes to large mammals today. We know that the dinosaur
skeletons were deposited in the ocean because we find shells of
marine animals where they grew on the dinosaur bones as well as
in the Dinosaur Bones : On the left, you can compare the size of
a hadrosaur femur (thigh bone) with the paleontologist who found
it. On the right, a Nodosaurus tibia (shin) that later became a
home for oysters when the bone was washed out to sea. Hadrosaurs
from California (duck-billed dinosaurs) were common large
herbivorous dinosaurs that lived near the end of the Cretaceous,
at the same time as