But Jurassic Parkway won't be in theaters anytime soon because so far, there's only indirect evidence that dinosaurs lived on the place that would become Long Island. Dinosaur bones and footprints have been unearthed nearby in New Jersey, Connecticut and the upstate Hudson River Valley. But not here.
Dinosaur fossils are hard to find anywhere, and even tougher to unearth on Long Island.
Except for a few exposed cliffs on the North Shore, in places like Garvies Point in Glen Cove and Roanoke Point north of Riverhead, almost all of the local rock that dinosaurs would have walked upon has since been buried beneath hundreds of feet of sand and gravel deposited by later glaciers. Another problem is that Long Island's soil is saturated with water and rich in oxygen, which means bones tend to break down quickly before they can mineralize and become stone fossils. It's just that conditions weren't right for preservation of bones,'' said Herbert Mills, curator of geology for Nassau County's division of museums. But Mills and other local geologists haven't given up hope. Mills told a visitor.