13200 Block of Mid-Atlantic Boulevard, Laurel, MD 20708, 301-627-7755.
Dinosaur Park interpretive area is open from dawn to dusk 7 days a week. The public is invited to participate in hands-on programs in the fossil area on the first and third Saturdays of every month from 12 noon until 4 pm.
Featuring a rare deposit of fossils from the Early Cretaceous period about 110 million years ago, the Park is part of a geologic formation called the Muirkirk Deposit that consists of sediments and clays that occur south of Washington D.C. to north of Baltimore. Here, paleontologists have unearthed fossilized bones of several kinds of dinosaurs, early mammals, and fossils of trees and early flowering plants.
The University of Richmond has reinstalled the permanent exhibition of Fluorescent Minerals from the Permanent Collection. It contains more than 300 specimens and more than 40 different mineral species from North America and beyond. Highlights of the installation include numerous minerals from New Jersey, yellow-green hyalite opal slabs from North Carolina, and deep red rubies from India. See the website.