Millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth — and thanks to the summer blockbusters like “Jurassic World Rebirth,” they still rule our imaginations today. Some dinos once stomped around the Midlands and Pee Dee region, but they weren’t alone. These five wild things walked central SC long before our time.
Pro tip: Explore the SC State Museum, McKissick Museum, and Florence County Museum to see fossils and casts up close.
Dire wolf
Larger than modern wolves, dire wolves once hunted Ice Age giants like bison and mastodons — long before they became fan favorites as protectors in “Game of Thrones.” A skull discovered in Florence County is one of the most complete specimens ever found, with a cast on view at the Florence County Museum and the original cataloged by the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History.
Dromaeosaurid (“Velociraptor-like” dinosaur)
A 1.5-inch tooth and other fragments found in Florence County in the 1990s proved that raptor dinosaurs once prowled the Pee Dee. These predators belong to the same family as Velociraptor and represent one of the few confirmed dinosaur fossils in SC.
Glyptodon
Like a modern armadillo, but the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. A shell fragment discovered in Florence marked the northernmost US record of this massive herbivore, which lived 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago in the Pliocene epoch.
Mastodon
The American mastodon was an Ice Age cousin of the elephant, standing up to 10 ft tall. Fossilized mastodon teeth have been found across SC — from river basins near Columbia to coastal deposits — showing these Ice Age giants once roamed the area.
Megalodon
Long before the mastodons of the Ice Age, the Midlands were underwater. In those seas swam the megalodon — a shark over 70 ft long, the size of two school buses, with teeth larger than a human hand. Fossils are still found in SC’s rivers and are displayed at the State Museum.
