Diving for Dinosaurs: Cretaceous Fossils from Croatia

Speaker: Matt Lamanna, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

In the late 1980s, Early Cretaceous-aged (~130 million-year-old) dinosaur fossils were discovered in shallow waters of the Adriatic Sea on the coast of Istria, Croatia. Approximately 200 bones, teeth, and bone fragments from at least three distinct dinosaur species were found. Since then, however, little paleontological work has been conducted at the site. During the Early Cretaceous, this region of Croatia is thought to have been part of a Bahamas-like series of islands; in the modern world, such environments are often home to unique, highly unusual species. In October 2018, with funding support from the Carnegie Discoverers, a multinational team of paleontologists, geologists, scientific divers, and science educators conducted a paleontological survey of this Croatian site. In this presentation, Dr. Lamanna will recount results of this effort, which constitutes one of the world’s first underwater explorations for dinosaur fossils.