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Way Downstream

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In Ocean City, it’s too late to build the world’s first Boathenge — whether or not businessman Joe Kro-Art’s proposal to raise 38 boats in a Stonehenge-like circle on the beach wins the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers, who’ve been asked by town officials to evaluate the promotional idea. Maryland’s been scooped by Missouri, where U.S. Geological Survey research chemist Carl Orazio has already erected a Boathenge on his property along the Missouri River near Columbia, home of the University of Missouri. A former tenant had collected and abandoned the boats.

Stonehenge copycats ranging from Carhenge and Truckhenge to Foamhenge, Soaphenge and Toilethenge have been documented by The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map: (www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146413217) …

In Maryland, 28 new plants and animals may be listed as threatened or endangered. Department of Natural Resources is seeking greater protection for blackbanded sunfish, two species of beetles and mountain chorus frog, among creatures; and round-leaf serviceberry, glade mallow and cloud sedge, among plants. The only mammal on the list is a bat, the eastern small-footed myotis, which may jump from in need of conservation to endangered …

In Tracys Landing, ambitious sailors avid for ever-bigger boats may find their hearts’ desire docked on Rockhold Creek at Herrington Harbour North. A 150-foot two-masted schooner Clipper City has taken refuge there after being repossessed at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, where it operated as a tourist boat until toppled by bills. Now LabMarine of Rock Hall, the court-appointed substitute trustee, is seeking a buyer for the tall ship. Make your offer to Bryan Braley at 800-308-6798 …

In St. Mary’s County, historic Leonardtown’s waterfront on Breton Bay is getting a facelift. Double attention is coming to the long-ignored waterfront of this rare Southern Maryland town with a square. On the private side, developer Ron Russo, who re-did the face of North Beach, is building Leonardtown Landing, a community of townhomes (26 in Phase 1), with shopping and a restaurant. On the public side, $200,000 was approved this month by the State Board of Public Works to add toilets and concessions to the emergent, horseshoe-shaped Waterfront Park at Leonardtown Wharf, which includes a boardwalk, piers, picnic tables, a bird observatory, nature trails and, eventually, shuttle service up Washington Street to downtown. The Southern Maryland Heritage Area Consortium is chipping in $14,000 more for environmental and historic signs and banners along the promenade …

Our Creature Feature comes from Switzerland, where workers building a house near the German border discovered something amazing indeed: one of the world’s biggest fields of dinosaur bones, nearly a mile of Plateosaurus remains.

The flat lizard was a peaceful creature 25 feet long and 13 feet high. Roaming river deltas in herds about 210 million years ago, they were believed to be one of Earth’s first big creatures to eat only plants; they loved to dine on pine. But they had tiny brains and weren’t very smart, unlike the hobby paleontologist who recognized what the workers had found.