There are many questions that have yet to be answered regarding the time era during which dinosaurs roamed the earth. Countless books, articles, journals, etc. have been published trying to unlock the mysteries of these great creatures. When one thinks of the discovery of dinosaur bones, Oklahoma usually does not come to mind as a paleontology dig site. Perhaps that kind of thinking should be changed. In 1994 paleontologist Richard Cifelli discovered what he thought were trunks of prehistoric trees in southeastern Oklahoma (Possible Largest Dinosaur Found in Oklahoma). "Sauroposeidon was discovered in the middle of the Antlers Formation, which is equivalent to the Trinity Group and extends over northern Texas, southeastern Oklahoma, and southwestern Arkansas. The formation has the same contours of the present day Gulf of Mexico, because this area was the boundary of the gulf at the time. It was comparable to something like the Mississippi River delta of today. The site where we discovered the vertebrae of Sauroposeidon is near the Red River, two or three dozen miles from the Texas border" (Dino Land) His findings turned out to be the neck bone of one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered. Cifelli named this prehistoric creature the Sauroposeidon, which means thunder lizard (Possible Largest Dinosaur Found in Oklahoma). Although this discovery is relatively unknown now to most, people of the science world have stayed fascinated with this discovery and will for a long time to come.
.
Dr. Richard Cifelli, who was one of the leaders in the discovery, is the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma. He also is an associate professor in the department of Zoology as well as a teacher in the School of Geology and Geophysics. His research interests include paleobiology, the evolution of mammals, and systematics (Cifelli, Cifelli).
