SANTONIAN TO ?EARLIEST CAMPANIAN (LATE CRETACEOUS) FUNGI FROM THE MILK RIVER FORMATION, SOUTHERN ALBERTA, CANADA

Palynology ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. KALGUTKAR ◽  
D. R. BRAMAN
2002 ◽  
Vol 39 (10) ◽  
pp. 1553-1577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias HD Payenberg ◽  
Dennis R Braman ◽  
Donald W Davis ◽  
Andrew D Miall

U–Pb geochronology, palynology, and lithostratigraphy were employed on the Late Cretaceous rocks in southern Alberta and Montana to solve litho- and chronostratigraphic correlation problems. In the outcrop area around Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park, southern Alberta, the Milk River Formation has a Santonian to possibly very earliest Campanian age and was deposited between ~84.5 Ma and 83.5 Ma. In southern Montana, the Eagle Formation was deposited from ~83.5 Ma to 81.2 Ma, and contains different lithologies and depositional environments as opposed to southern Alberta. In north-central Montana, the Telegraph Creek Formation and Virgelle and Deadhorse Coulee members are equivalent in depositional environments and time to those of the Milk River Formation in southern Alberta. The upper Eagle member, however, has no time- or facies-equivalent rocks around Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park, but is time equivalent to the Alderson Member of the Lea Park Formation in southeastern Alberta. A hiatus of ~2.5 Ma is present between the top of the Milk River Formation in the outcrop area and the basal beds of the Pakowki Formation. The Pakowki transgression occurred at around 81.0 Ma based on a U–Pb zircon age of 80.7 ± 0.2 Ma from bentonite beds just above the bottom of the Pakowki Formation in southern Alberta. This age agrees with previous ages of 80.7 ± 0.6 Ma for the Ardmore Bentonite Beds and ~81.0 Ma for the Claggett transgression in southern Montana.


1996 ◽  
Vol 33 (12) ◽  
pp. 1655-1667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darla K. Zelenitsky ◽  
L. V. Hills ◽  
Philip J. Currie

Examination of a large number of eggshell fragments collected from the Oldman Formation of southern Alberta reveals a greater ootaxonomic diversity than is known from complete eggs or clutches. Three new oogenera and oospecies of the ornithoid-ratite morphotype and one of the ornithoid-prismatic morphotype are established, based on the eggshell fragments. Porituberoolithus warnerensis oogen. et oosp. nov. and Continuoolithus canadensis oogen. et oosp. nov. have a microstructure similar to that of elongatoolithid eggs of theropod dinosaurs. Tristraguloolithus cracioides oogen. et oosp. nov. and Dispersituberoolithus exilis oogen. et oosp. nov. possess an external zone and thus have a microstructure like modern avian eggshell. Tristraguloolithus has a shell thickness, microstructure, and surface sculpture similar to those of recent bird eggshell of the family Cracidae (order Galliformes). Dispersituberoolithus exhibits the primitive or normal eggshell condition of some recent neognathous avian taxa. The ootaxa described indicate a diversity of both avian and theropod dinosaur egg layers within Devil's Coulee and Knight's Ranch, southern Alberta, during the Late Cretaceous.


2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Brinkman

A Field Museum expedition to collect Late Cretaceous dinosaurs operated for three and a half months in the summer of 1922 in the Red Deer River badlands (Oldman and Dinosaur Park formations, Belly River Group) in an area now known as Dinosaur Provincial Park in southern Alberta, Canada. Associate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Elmer S. Riggs led the expedition. He was ably assisted by veteran collectors George F. Sternberg and John B. Abbott. A trio of novice collectors, Anthony Dombrosky, George Bedford and C. Harold Riggs, Elmer's youngest son, rounded out the party. The expedition was a success, netting several quality specimens of duckbilled dinosaurs; one small, partial theropod skeleton; an unidentified duckbilled dinosaur skull; four turtles; other miscellaneous fossil vertebrate remains; numerous fossil plants and invertebrates; and a large fossil log. In 1956, one of these specimens—a nearly complete lambeosaurine hadrosaur reconstructed as Lambeosaurus—debuted as the less fortunate partner of Gorgosaurus in the museum's iconic ‘Dinosaurs, Predator and Prey’ exhibit in Stanley Field Hall. Both of these specimens are still on display in a permanent exhibit called ‘Evolving Planet’. Another notable specimen prepared in 1999-2000 after nearly eighty years in an unopened field jacket has been identified as a juvenile Gorgosaurus. This specimen—nicknamed ‘Elmer’—was recently touring the globe as part of the ‘Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries’ exhibit. More importantly, the expedition was an invaluable shakedown experience for the fossil hunting crew and their new equipment in the months before they left on an ambitious, multi-year fossil mammal collecting expedition to Argentina and Bolivia. An oft-repeated myth holds that Riggs viewed the Alberta expedition as a failure and departed the field the moment he obtained permission to go to South America. This paper shows that myth to be unfounded.


2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-83
Author(s):  
Marisol Montellano-Ballesteros ◽  
Richard C. Fox

A new tribotherian mammal, Tirotherium aptum gen. et sp. nov., is described from the late Santonian to early Campanian upper Milk River Formation of Verdigris Coulee, southern Alberta, Canada. The new mammal is known only from isolated teeth, five upper and three lower molars. The upper molars represent two or possibly three pre-ultimate loci and are marked by reduction and loss of the stylar shelf anteriorly, loss of the stylocone, a paracone that is larger than the metacone, weakly developed conules, a low, small protocone, and specialized postvallum single-rank shear. The lower molars probably represent two pre-ultimate loci and are characterized by an anteriorly positioned paraconid, trenchant paracristid, small, posterolingual metaconid, a distal metacristid, broadly open trigonid angle, and a short, basined talonid in which the hypoconulid is closer to the entoconid than to the hypoconid. The molars of Tirotherium most closely resemble those of Picopsis Fox, 1980, a tribotherian that also occurs in the upper Milk River Formation, but the molars of Tirotherium are significantly larger than those of Picopsis. Nonetheless, Tirotherium aptum is best classified in the Picopsidae, a boreosphenidan family of tiny mammalian faunivores of uncertain relationships to other tribotherians, and displaying a unique mosaic of primitive and derived characters.


1973 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1769-1781 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elkanah A. Babcock

Regional joints in southern Alberta form patterns that persist over an area extending from the Rocky Mountain Foothills to the Saskatchewan border. These patterns persist vertically through a section of rocks ranging in age from Late Cretaceous to Late Paleocene.The basic unit of jointing is an orthogonal system consisting of two sets of extension fractures. Two or more orthogonal systems may be present at a given locality creating a complex pattern of joints. System I predominates and has sets trending approximately 65 °and 155°, or roughly normal and parallel to the Rocky Mountains. System II joints trend approximately 5 °and 95°, but swing about 15 °clockwise in the Drumheller area. A system having sets trending 45 °and 135 °is present near Medicine Hat.System I joints roughly parallel intermediate width (32-64 km) subsurface structural undulations described by Robinson et al. (1969). System II joints trend parallel and normal to the crest of the Sweet-grass Arch. Further study is needed to determine the age and origin of jointing.Regional joints in southern Alberta show similarities with regional joints in similar structural settings on the Appalachian Plateau and on the Central Oklahoma Plains. Within these areas orthogonal systems of regional joints trend normal and parallel to the adjacent fold belt over vast areas and through great thicknesses of sedimentary rock.


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