Fossils Near Me shows which animals and plants left fossils within 25 to 200 km of any US town or ZIP code. Type a place in the search box, or open one of the 50 state pages, and the results list the dinosaurs, sea creatures, ice age mammals and plants recorded nearby, with the most recognizable first. The 50 states together have 461,036 fossil records in the database.
How does the Fossils Near Me tool work?
Every find comes from the Paleobiology Database, a public database built by working paleontologists from published research. Each record is one fossil occurrence: a kind of animal or plant, a place and an age range. A search collects the records inside your radius, groups them by kind of life and counts them. When a place has few finds, the search widens from 25 km to 50, 100 and then 200 km.
The timeline under the globe runs from 540 million years ago to today. It uses the PALEOMAP plate reconstruction and paleo-elevation maps by Christopher Scotese, so continents move and seas flood and drain as you drag it. The moving pin marks where your search spot sat on the ancient Earth, which was often a different latitude from today. The page says a place was under a shallow sea only when the map puts the spot below sea level and most local fossils from that time are marine. Otherwise it uses weaker wording. For how the plates move, see tectonic plates.
Why does the United States have so many fossils?
Three things: thick sedimentary basins, a continental seaway and erosion. Fossils survive where mud or sand buried an animal quickly, and much of the western and central US sits on stacks of river, lake and sea sediment.
From about 100 to 66 million years ago the Western Interior Seaway ran from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and split North America in two. Its shores left dinosaur bones and its water left ammonites, sharks and mosasaurs, which is why Baculites turns up in the records of Wyoming, Texas, South Dakota and other states.
Uplift of the Rocky Mountains and rivers cutting through soft rock then made badlands, where rain exposes new bone every year. Hell Creek in Montana and the White River Badlands of South Dakota are the best-known examples. Quarries, mines and universities with long field programs have done the rest of the work of finding things.
What lived where? Fossils by region
- Northern Plains and Rockies. Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus from the last stretch of the Cretaceous (Montana has 45 Triceratops records and 19 Tyrannosaurus), and Allosaurus, Stegosaurus and Diplodocus from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation. Wyoming leads the country with 938 dinosaur records, followed by Montana with 896.
- Southwest and Texas. Dimetrodon from the Permian red beds of Texas (70 records), Coelophysis from the Triassic of New Mexico, and the giant sauropod Alamosaurus from the end of the Cretaceous.
- Pacific coast. Ice age mammals and marine rock. California has 55,979 fossil records and only 15 of them are dinosaurs; the Quaternary period has the most.
- Gulf and Atlantic coastal plain. Sharks, shells and ice age mammals in Florida, which has no dinosaur records, and Cretaceous sea floor in New Jersey, where Hadrosaurus was found in 1858.
In all, 35 states have at least one dinosaur record and 15 have none, including Florida, Ohio and Michigan.
How do you read a fossil count honestly?
A count measures collecting as well as abundance. California has the most records in the database, 55,979, and Texas is next with 52,738. Both are large states with many universities and a long history of study, and a record exists only after someone publishes a paper. New Hampshire has 24 records and Rhode Island 35. Those numbers reflect little exposed sedimentary rock and little fieldwork, and they do not mean the ground is empty.
A record is also not an animal. The database lists 18 Coelophysis records for New Mexico, though one quarry there holds hundreds of skeletons. Dinosaur counts include track names such as Grallator, which has 66 Utah records, so a high count can mean a good trackway. Treat each number as a lower bound on what is in the ground and as a map of where people have looked.
Where can you see real fossils?
Natural history museums mount whole skeletons, and university geology museums often show regional finds for free. National and state parks protect fossil beds and trackways where you can see the rock the fossils came from. Some working quarries have visitor centers that let you watch bone being uncovered, and local rock and fossil clubs run field trips to collecting sites.
Collecting rules depend on the land. On federal land, vertebrate fossils need a permit, while common invertebrate and plant fossils can generally be collected for personal use. On private land, get the owner's permission first. For a tour of what counts as a fossil, see examples of fossils, and for how the people who dig them work, branches of paleontology.
The most fossil-rich states
| State | Fossil finds | Kinds of life |
|---|---|---|
| California | 55,979 | 4,363 |
| Texas | 52,738 | 3,925 |
| Wyoming | 29,749 | 2,473 |
| Florida | 18,915 | 1,840 |
| Utah | 11,472 | 1,954 |
| New Mexico | 11,388 | 1,837 |
| Montana | 10,138 | 1,801 |
| Colorado | 9,344 | 2,419 |
| New Jersey | 4,622 | 909 |
| South Dakota | 4,583 | 847 |
Frequently asked questions
Where can I find fossils near me?
Type a town or ZIP code into the search box on this page. The map shows fossils recorded within 25 to 200 km, and the list shows the most notable animals and plants found there.
Where do the fossil records come from?
From the Paleobiology Database, a public database of fossil finds compiled from published research and maintained by scientists. Each find is a recorded occurrence of a fossil at a place and a time.
Which US state has the most fossils?
In the Paleobiology Database, California has the most recorded fossil finds (55,979), followed by Texas and Wyoming. Counts reflect how much research has been done as well as how fossil-rich the rocks are.
What does the timeline show?
The timeline runs from 540 million years ago to today. Drag it to see how the continents moved and where the shallow seas were, and to see which fossils belong to each period.
Keep exploring
Credits and data
- Fossil finds: the Paleobiology Database, licensed CC BY 4.0. Counts are records in the database, which reflect research effort as well as geology.
- Ancient Earth maps and plate motion: PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs, Scotese and Wright (2018), CC BY 4.0, doi:10.5281/zenodo.5460860.
- Place names: US Census Gazetteer (public domain) and GeoNames, CC BY 4.0.
- Silhouettes: PhyloPic contributors.