Cape Sebastian

The board's dinosaur took thirty years to come out of the cliff and twenty-five more to be described. Geological Survey workers found the bone in the early 1960s; it was found again in March 1969 and identified from a sketch, and in 1994 Dave Taylor led crews of south-coast volunteers who trenched it out of hard sandstone over two trips. It proved to be a sacrum, at least eight fused vertebrae. A toe bone found near Mitchell in 2015 was announced first as Oregon's first confirmed dinosaur; the Cape Sebastian sacrum was formally described in 2019.

What the plaque says

Oregon Geology Cape Sebastian Native people call this cape Daa-ghvsh-ne'. European explorers noted the landmark because of its elevation rising 668 feet above the Pacific Ocean; the name Cape San Sebastian was later given in 1603 by Spanish explorer Sabastian Vizciano. In the 1960s, the seventy-pound, fossilized remains of a duck-billed hadrosaur were discovered in the sandstone that forms the cape. The sandstone and fossil share a complex geologic history. During the Late Cretaceous period (84 to 72 million years ago) the creature fell into a river or was swept out to sea in what is now northwestern Mexico. Together the sandstone and fossil moved northward along major crustal faults to their present location on the Oregon Coast. In 1994, the hadrosaur became the first dinosaur fossil excavated in Oregon.

Where it stands

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