When Dinosaurs Roamed Arizona

Meet Doug Wolfe of White Mountain Exploration Center (WMDEC) and Zuni Dinosaur Institute for Geosciences (ZDIG). Doug is a Paleontologist and Geologist responsible for the discovery of several new dinosaurs. He is also a Hydrogeologist who recently worked with Pinetop Lakeside on a grant provided by the AZ Department of Environmental Quality on the Billy Creek Watershed.

Doug and his team have been on the Discovery Channel and the BBC, and Doug was recently featured on a German educational TV show, “Anna and the Wild Animals.” He recently presented Dinosaurs in the Greenhouse at the White Mountain Nature Center. Doug and his partners work with many other institutions and their scientists and volunteers around the country, sometimes from around the world: China, South Africa, Japan, France, and Germany.

What happened 90 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period? Doug says, “Part of what makes dinosaurs so rare is that during the middle Cretaceous Period, 90 million years ago, the earth went through one of its most extreme greenhouse climate effects. Temperatures, carbon dioxide, and sea levels rose to their highest in the last 300 million years”.

Doug and his partners have found four brand new dinosaur species that don’t exist anywhere else. Learn exciting facts about Zuniceratops, which lived in the White Mountains 90 million years ago. What started as a hobby with Doug’s family, Hazel, and Christopher, during many hours of digging and searching, led to the discovery of what they named Zuniceratops in November 1996.

Meet Nothronychus, the first sickle-clawed Therizinosaur discovered in North America. “Nothronychus was only known in Asia before we discovered this, says Doug. That’s part of the story. The relatives of these guys, T-Rex, and other land bridge dinosaurs, were thought to have come from China. The bones are at the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Mesa.”

Doug has a Blue Ridge High School Fab Lab classroom with exciting exhibits, books, media, puzzles, real fossils, and rocks. Exhibits include some of their discoveries, like the skull of the Zuniceratops and casts and material of “Suskityrannus”- an early relative of T-Rex (25 million years older). The Fab Lab classroom is designed to host student classrooms, workshops, and summer school programs.

Dinosaur exhibits open to the public are currently at the Springerville Chamber of Commerce. Tours and custom tours are available for a fee to multiple destinations. Tours range from nearby couple-hour trips to all-day or through arrangement, camping trips, and more. Trips and tours are coordinated for age groups ranging from four- and five-year-olds to serious high school and junior high school students interested in science. Northern Pioneer College will offer a Dinosaur history and biology class in the Fall semester of 2024.

Everything is available by appointment and design if you want to see and learn more. Contact Doug if interested in programs, volunteering, lectures, summer camps, STEM tutoring, climate, exhibits at the BRHS Fab Lab, and more at douglasgwolfe@gmail.com or 480-201-0665. Springerville Chamber of Commerce is at 7 W. Main St. 928-333-2123. Free rock and fossil samples are available to students.