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Dinosaurs under the Aurora
In 1961, while mapping rock exposures along the Colville River in Alaska, an oil company geologist would unknowingly find the evidence for a startling discovery. Long before the North Slope of Alaska was being exploited for its petroleum resources it was a place where dinosaurs roamed. Dinosaurs under the Aurora immerses readers in the challenges, stark beauty, and hard-earned rewards of conducting paleontological field work in the Arctic. Roland A. Gangloff recounts the significant discoveries of field and museum research on Arctic dinosaurs, most notably of the last 25 years when the remarkable record of dinosaurs from Alaska was compiled. This research has changed the way we think about dinosaurs and their world. Examining long-standing controversies, such as the end-Cretaceous extinction of dinosaurs and whether dinosaurs were residents or just seasonal visitors to polar latitudes, Gangloff takes readers on a delightful and instructive journey into the world of paleontology as it is conducted in the land under the aurora.
eBook
TAPHONOMY AND PALEOECOLOGY OF A BONEBED FROM THE PRINCE CREEK FORMATION, NORTH SLOPE, ALASKA
The late Campanian–Maastrichtian Liscomb Bonebed is the richest source of dinosaur remains thus far documented in the polar regions. This bed is formally defined herein and assigned to the upper part of the Prince Creek Formation; the bonebed and several other organic-rich beds are part of a 178 m sequence of fluvial and volcaniclastic deposits. The Liscomb Bonebed is a mudstone rich in clay, comminuted plant remains, and palynomorphs with a total organic carbon (TOC) of 6.80%–10.55%. It contains a multitaxic, low-diversity, dinosaur assemblage, dominated by Edmontosaurus sp., which is primarily represented by late juveniles. Four theropod taxa are almost exclusively represented by isolated teeth. With >6000 specimens collected, the assemblage is characterized by a Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI) of 36, dominance of Voorhies Groups I and II, and an underrepresentation of teeth, skulls, and girdles. Bones are highly fragmented and exhibit low weathering and abrasion indices. Bite marks occur on slightly more than 1% of elements. The densest accumulations of bone are typically found in the middle third of the bed with the largest bones at the bottom. The Liscomb Bonebed assemblage resulted from mass mortality associated with overbank floods that formed floodplain mires and ponds. Data from the current study clearly establish the Alaskan Arctic as the year-round residence of a rich dinosaur fauna and add further support to the hypotheses that even high-latitude hadrosaurids were gregarious and formed social groups.
Journal Article
THE FIRST PACHYCEPHALOSAURINE (DINOSAURIA) FROM THE PALEO-ARCTIC OF ALASKA AND ITS PALEOGEOGRAPHIC IMPLICATIONS
The last 15 years of field work along the beaches and bluffs of the Colville River, on Alaska's Arctic Coastal Plain, have produced a diverse record of high-latitude dinosaurs. Seven families and eight genera are documented with several other families and genera possibly being represented by less diagnostic remains and only a few scattered elements (Table 1; Nelms, 1989; Gangloff, 1994, 1998; Fiorillo et al., 1999; Fiorillo and Gangloff, 2000, 2001). Virtually all of the common major groups of theropods and ornithopods typical of the Late Cretaceous of northern North America are present. Most of the skeletal remains are found in rocks assigned to the Prince Creek Formation of the Colville Group (Detterman et al., 1963, 1975; Phillips, 1990). The diversity of the dinosaur record in Alaska has been significantly increased with the discovery of abundant tracks and trackways along the North Slope and Arctic Coastal Plain over the last six years. The majority of the ichnofossil record is contained in various terrestrial coal-bearing rocks assigned to the Early Cretaceous Nanushuk Group (Ahlbrandt et al., 1979). The dinosaur biozone spans the upper part of the Nanushuk group and all of the Colville Group, ranging from the mid to Late Cretaceous (Albian to Maastrichtian; Mull, 1985). The already diverse and abundant record of dinosaur skeletal fossils was increased by the discovery in 1999 of the first evidence of pachycephalosaurs from this region (Fig. 1). This taxon is now represented by a nearly complete left squamosal and the contiguous, posterior, basal part of the dome. The highly thickened bone with characteristic prismatic internal structure accompanied by the distinctive ornamentation diagnostic of this group allows for an unequivocal identification to the subfamily level. The specimen (UAM # AK-493-V-001, Fig. 2.2) is most of the left squamosal and includes a portion of a thickened dome. The specimen is bounded on three sides by parted sutures interpreted as representing the contacts with the quadrate, exoccipital, and the narrow descending portion of the parietal bone (see Fig. 2.2, 2.4). The remaining margin exhibits a broken surface that reflects the polygonal prismatic internal structure of a part of the parietal-frontal dome. The sutures are well preserved and show little or no evidence of fluvial abrasion or weathering due to subaerial exposure prior to burial.
Journal Article
Polar Dinosaurs
The study of polar dinosaurs provides potentially unique insights into their physiological adaptations because they may have been exposed to extreme conditions not experienced elsewhere. These conditions cannot be assumed to have been the same as at comparable latitudes today, however.
Journal Article
CRETACEOUS DINOSAUR PATHWAYS IN THE PALEO-ARCTIC AND ALONG THE WESTERN INTERIOR SEAWAY
The record of Cretaceous age dinosaur trackways and their common association with ocean shorelines has been steadily accumulating since the 1940s.¹ One of the most impressive and best-known records can be found in central Texas, an area that occupied the southern end of the great Western Interior Seaway. The Early Cretaceous (Albian) age Glen Rose Formation here contains numerous and widespread trackway complexes at several stratigraphic levels. Such widespread trackway complexes are now referred to as “megatracksite complexes.”² The Glen Rose Formation includes fine examples of megatracksites that crop out over an area of some 38,000 square miles (100,000 square
Book Chapter
NATURAL RESOURCES, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND ARCTIC DINOSAURS
What could Arctic dinosaur research and short-term solutions to our country’s energy crisis have to do with one another? Can one burn dinosaur bones to produce energy? Are dinosaur fossils an important source of North America’s petroleum? Are dinosaur bones an alternative source of energy to coal and petroleum? The answer to the first suggestion—burning dinosaur bones to produce energy—is “No!” The answer to the second (despite Sinclair’s Oil’s iconic trademark) is also a “No!” Interestingly, the answer to the third question is a qualified “Yes!”
During the great uranium “rush” of the 1950s in the Four Corners
Book Chapter
THE ARCTIC SETTING
The Arctic coastal plain is crisscrossed by a host of meandering rivers that drain the northern slope of the rugged ancestral Brooks Range to the south. The rivers are pregnant with organic-rich sediment and rush headlong to the northern sea, being fed by melting snowfields and the common cloudbursts that sweep in from the Western Interior Seaway to the north and east. Large herds or aggregates of duck-billed dinosaurs move along river banks feeding on dense “gardens” of mud-loving horsetail rushes that have sprung forth from their subterranean rhizomes into the reawakening sunlight.¹ Monodominant patches of drought-resistant ferns are interspersed
Book Chapter
FUTURE EXPANSION OF THE ARCTIC DINOSAUR RECORD
The southern Alberta buffalo plains greet you with their vast grain and forage fields, slight topographic undulations, endless skies, scattered ranches, and small sleepy towns as you proceed eastward from the hustle and bustle of urban Calgary. If you had no previous knowledge of the region’s geography, within an hour you would find yourself trying to fend off the boredom of what seems to be endless flatlands that characterize most of the 90 miles (145 kilometers) to Drumheller. When you finally see the sign that directs you towards Drumheller, you turn north and slowly descend through a series of roadcuts
Book Chapter