Films like Jurassic Park have long intrigued Florida residents, who question where they can visit archaeological sites and see dinosaur remains. When Jurassic Park Orlando opened in Florida in the 1990s, scientists received hundreds of phone calls from people asking where the dinosaurs in the film could have been found. Unfortunately for them, the answer was nowhere. Florida is one of the few states that had zero dinosaurs roaming around millions of years ago. The reason is simple: Florida was completely under water during that time. Animals from thousands of years ago, like mammoths and mastodons, are believed to have roamed southern Florida, but dinosaurs were not in the area. Florida was under water until roughly 30 million years ago, while dinosaurs were in existence between 65 and 225 million years ago. While reptiles lived in the sea where Florida now stands, paleontologists say that these were not true dinosaurs. The closest location to Florida where a dinosaur fossil has been found is Columbus, Georgia. Fossils have been found throughout the state of Florida, but these have been for animals that came millions of years after dinosaurs, like sea turtles, tortoises, and large ground sloths.
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