State fossils tend to be quite dramatic. California has chosen the Pleistocene Sabertooth cat, Smilodon fatalis familiar from the La Brea Tar Pits, and Alaska has the Woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius. Of course there are plenty of dinosaurs (Colorado's Stegosaurus, New Jersey's Hadrosaurus foulki, or Montana's duck-billed dinosaur Maiasaura peeblesorum) and even sets of dinosaur footprints (both Connecticut and Massachusetts). Nevada recalls its days as beachfront property with a Triassic Ichthyosaur, Shonisaurus popularis.Idaho has chosen an early horse, Equus simplicidens. Alabama and Mississippi have a pair of Eocenearchaeocete whales, and Vermont has the most recent fossil, Charlotte, the Vermont Whale, a Belugawhale (Delphinapterus leucas) from an arm of the sea that extended into Pleistocene Vermont. Pennsylvania and Ohio are both represented by trilobites. New York has the less-familiar Eurypterid, and Maine has gone out on a limb with an early vascular plant from the Devonian, Pertica quadrifaria.
Some of the State Fossils are a little generic, like Georgia's unspecified shark's tooth, but Illinois is represented by the unique and mysterious Tully Monster, Tullimonstrum gregarium from the Carboniferous swamplands.
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