An Early Cretaceous (Berriasian) fossil-bearing locality from the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, yielding the oldest dinosaur skeletal remains from western Canada

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 542-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramon S. Nagesan ◽  
James A. Campbell ◽  
Jason D. Pardo ◽  
Kendra I. Lennie ◽  
Matthew J. Vavrek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Early Cretaceous ◽  
Depositional Environment ◽  
Upper Cretaceous ◽  
Upper Jurassic ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Western Canada ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Terrestrial Vertebrate ◽  
Overlying Strata

Western North America preserves iconic dinosaur faunas from the Upper Jurassic and Upper Cretaceous, but this record is interrupted by an approximately 20 Myr gap with essentially no terrestrial vertebrate fossil localities. This poorly sampled interval is nonetheless important because it is thought to include a possible mass extinction, the origin of orogenic controls on dinosaur spatial distribution, and the origin of important Upper Cretaceous dinosaur taxa. Therefore, dinosaur-bearing rocks from this interval are of particular interest to vertebrate palaeontologists. In this study, we report on one such locality from Highwood Pass, Alberta. This locality has yielded a multitaxic assemblage, with the most diagnostic material identified so far including ankylosaurian osteoderms and a turtle plastron element. The fossil horizon lies within the upper part of the Pocaterra Creek Member of the Cadomin Formation (Blairmore Group). The fossils are assigned as Berriasian (earliest Cretaceous) in age, based on previous palynomorph analyses of the Pocaterra Creek Member and underlying and overlying strata. The fossils lie within numerous cross-bedded sandstone beds separated by pebble lenses. These sediments are indicative of a relatively high-energy depositional environment, and the distribution of these fossils over multiple beds indicates that they accumulated over multiple events, possibly flash floods. The fossils exhibit a range of surface weathering, having intact to heavily weathered cortices. The presence of definitive dinosaur material from near the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary of Alberta establishes the oldest record of dinosaur body fossils in western Canada and provides a unique opportunity to study the Early Cretaceous dinosaur faunas of western North America.

scholarly journals The first reported ceratopsid dinosaur from eastern North America (Owl Creek Formation, Upper Cretaceous, Mississippi, USA)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew A. Farke ◽  
George E. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Depositional Environment ◽  
Upper Cretaceous ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Western Interior Seaway ◽  
Double Root ◽  
Union County ◽  
Dentary Tooth

Ceratopsids (“horned dinosaurs”) are known from western North America and Asia, a distribution reflecting an inferred subaerial link between the two landmasses during the Late Cretaceous. However, this clade was previously unknown from eastern North America, presumably due to limited outcrop of the appropriate age and depositional environment as well as the separation of eastern and western North America by the Western Interior Seaway during much of the Late Cretaceous. A dentary tooth from the Owl Creek Formation (late Maastrichtian) of Union County, Mississippi, represents the first reported occurrence of Ceratopsidae from eastern North America. This tooth shows a combination of features typical of Ceratopsidae, including a double root and a prominent, blade-like carina. Based on the age of the fossil, we hypothesize that it is consistent with a dispersal of ceratopsids into eastern North America during the very latest Cretaceous, presumably after the two halves of North America were reunited following the retreat of the Western Interior Seaway.

scholarly journals The first reported ceratopsid dinosaur from eastern North America (Owl Creek Formation, Upper Cretaceous, Mississippi, USA)

PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e3342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew A. Farke ◽  
George E. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Depositional Environment ◽  
Upper Cretaceous ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Western Interior Seaway ◽  
Double Root ◽  
Union County ◽  
Dentary Tooth

Ceratopsids (“horned dinosaurs”) are known from western North America and Asia, a distribution reflecting an inferred subaerial link between the two landmasses during the Late Cretaceous. However, this clade was previously unknown from eastern North America, presumably due to limited outcrop of the appropriate age and depositional environment as well as the separation of eastern and western North America by the Western Interior Seaway during much of the Late Cretaceous. A dentary tooth from the Owl Creek Formation (late Maastrichtian) of Union County, Mississippi, represents the first reported occurrence of Ceratopsidae from eastern North America. This tooth shows a combination of features typical of Ceratopsidae, including a double root and a prominent, blade-like carina. Based on the age of the fossil, we hypothesize that it is consistent with a dispersal of ceratopsids into eastern North America during the very latest Cretaceous, presumably after the two halves of North America were reunited following the retreat of the Western Interior Seaway.

scholarly journals The first reported ceratopsid dinosaur from eastern North America (Owl Creek Formation, Upper Cretaceous, Mississippi, USA)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew A. Farke ◽  
George E. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Depositional Environment ◽  
Upper Cretaceous ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Western Interior Seaway ◽  
Double Root ◽  
Union County ◽  
Dentary Tooth

Ceratopsids (“horned dinosaurs”) are known from western North America and Asia, a distribution reflecting an inferred subaerial link between the two landmasses during the Late Cretaceous. However, this clade was previously unknown from eastern North America, presumably due to limited outcrop of the appropriate age and depositional environment as well as the separation of eastern and western North America by the Western Interior Seaway during much of the Late Cretaceous. A dentary tooth from the Owl Creek Formation (late Maastrichtian) of Union County, Mississippi, represents the first reported occurrence of Ceratopsidae from eastern North America. This tooth shows a combination of features typical of Ceratopsidae, including a double root and a prominent, blade-like carina. Based on the age of the fossil, we hypothesize that it is consistent with a dispersal of ceratopsids into eastern North America during the very latest Cretaceous, presumably after the two halves of North America were reunited following the retreat of the Western Interior Seaway.

scholarly journals A New Ankylosaurid Dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous (Kirtlandian) of New Mexico with Implications for Ankylosaurid Diversity in the Upper Cretaceous of Western North America

PLoS ONE ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. e108804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria M. Arbour ◽  
Michael E. Burns ◽  
Robert M. Sullivan ◽  
Spencer G. Lucas ◽  
Amanda K. Cantrell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
North America ◽  
Upper Cretaceous ◽  
Western North America

scholarly journals Cranial anatomy of Allosaurus jimmadseni, a new species from the lower part of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Western North America

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e7803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Chure ◽  
Mark A. Loewen
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
North America ◽  
Phylogenetic Analyses ◽  
Upper Jurassic ◽  
Morrison Formation ◽  
Ventral Margin ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Theropod Dinosaur ◽  
Theropod Dinosaurs ◽  
A New Species

Allosaurus is one of the best known theropod dinosaurs from the Jurassic and a crucial taxon in phylogenetic analyses. On the basis of an in-depth, firsthand study of the bulk of Allosaurus specimens housed in North American institutions, we describe here a new theropod dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Western North America, Allosaurus jimmadseni sp. nov., based upon a remarkably complete articulated skeleton and skull and a second specimen with an articulated skull and associated skeleton. The present study also assigns several other specimens to this new species, Allosaurus jimmadseni, which is characterized by a number of autapomorphies present on the dermal skull roof and additional characters present in the postcrania. In particular, whereas the ventral margin of the jugal of Allosaurus fragilis has pronounced sigmoidal convexity, the ventral margin is virtually straight in Allosaurus jimmadseni. The paired nasals of Allosaurus jimmadseni possess bilateral, blade-like crests along the lateral margin, forming a pronounced nasolacrimal crest that is absent in Allosaurus fragilis.

Notes on Polychaeta from the East Coast of Vancouver Island and from Adjacent Waters, with a Description of a New Species of Aricidea

1956 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Berkeley ◽  
C. Berkeley
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
North America ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Vancouver Island ◽  
Western Canada ◽  
Western North America ◽  
A New Species

Records are given of two species and a variety new to western Canada and notes on three other species already known from the region. A new species, Aricidea lopezi, and four species new to western North America, are described from the neighbourhood of Friday Harbour, Washington.

Sedimentology and stratigraphy of the Cretaceous Virginian Ridge Formation, Methow Basin, Washington

1985 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 1274-1285 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Trexler Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Upper Cretaceous ◽  
Western North America ◽  
The West ◽  
Detailed Model ◽  
North Central ◽  
North American Cordillera ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Tectonic Settings ◽  
Overlying Strata

The Cretaceous Methow Basin of north-central Washington is the southernmost of a series of Mesozoic successor basins in the Cordillera of western North America. The Albian–Campanian(?) Virginian Ridge Formation comprises three members, newly defined here, that gradationally interfinger with each other and grade laterally and upward into overlying strata. Detailed stratigraphic analysts of the Virginian Ridge Formation and of the intimately related parts of the Winthrop and Midnight Peak formations indicates that these units represent complexly interfingering facies derived from a variety of sources, both to the west and to the east of the basin and locally within the system. This study suggests a detailed model for the history of the Upper Cretaceous Methow Basin: generation of a restricted basin with a stable, roughly north–south-trending axis, filled by a stable, east-derived fluvial and deltaic system (Winthrop Formation) interfingering with a laterally amalgamated, west-derived northward and eastward transgressive fan-delta system (Virginian Ridge Formation). The sequence grades upward into, and finally is overwhelmed by, locally derived volcanics of the Midnight Peak Formation. Similar, and in part coeval, successor basin sequences throughout the North American Cordillera may have been generated in response to similar tectonic settings.

scholarly journals Evidence for fungal proliferation following the Cretaceous/Paleogene mass-extinction event, based on chemostratigraphy in the Raton and Powder River basins, western North America

2020 ◽  
pp. 134-142
Author(s):  
Keith Berry
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acid ◽  
North America ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
River Basins ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Ecosystem Recovery ◽  
Extinction Event ◽  
Mass Extinction Event ◽  
The Impact

The presence of the amino acid α-aminoisobutyric acid (Aib) within Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary clay in the Raton and Powder River basins in Colorado and Wyoming, respectively, has been described as compelling evidence that extraterrestrial Aib survived the high-energy Chicxulub impact. Based on contemporary experiments and simulations, however, it is highly unlikely that extraterrestrial Aib survived the impact, which had peak impact pressures and temperatures in excess of 600 GPa and 10,000 K, respectively. In other words, the amino acid signature of the carbonaceous chondritic asteroid that impacted Chicxulub was undoubtedly destroyed upon impact during formation of the vapor plume or so-called “fireball.” The only organisms known to produce Aib are the suite (more than 30 genera) of cosmopolitan saprotrophic filamentous fungi that include Trichoderma Pers., which has recently been hypothesized to have thrived during the K/Pg mass-extinction event. Therefore it is proposed that the Aib horizon in the K/Pg boundary clay in the Raton and Powder River basins correlates with the K/Pg boundary fungal spike, which thus far has only been observed in New Zealand (Southern Hemisphere). This proposition is based upon superimposing the Aib horizon on the well-known iridium and fern-spore spikes, as its stratigraphic position precisely matches that predicted by the fungal spike. If correct, this hypothesis alters the conventional perspective on the tempo and mode of terrestrial ecosystem recovery in western North America, as the heavily sampled K/Pg boundary section in the Raton Basin was instrumental in shaping the traditional narrative of the rapid recolonization of a denuded landscape by ferns via wind-blown spores in the immediate wake of regional deforestation caused by the K/Pg impact event. Perhaps more importantly, it could present an alternative to traditional palynological approaches for locating the fungal spike in other terrestrial K/Pg boundary sections and could provide additional support for the generalization that global mass-extinction events are frequently accompanied by fungal spikes.

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