Taphonomy of horned dinosaurs (Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae) from the late Campanian Kaiparowits Formation, Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument, Utah

Getty, Michael A., Loewen, Mark A., Roberts, Eric, Titus, Alan L., and Sampson, Scott D. (2010) Taphonomy of horned dinosaurs (Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae) from the late Campanian Kaiparowits Formation, Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument, Utah. In: Ryan, Michael J., Chinnery-Allgeier, Brenda J., and Eberth, David A., (eds.) New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs: the Royal Tyrrell Museum Ceratopsian Symposium. Life of the Past . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, USA, pp. 478-494.

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Abstract

[Extract] A collaborative palaeontologicsl survey conducted by the Utah Museum of Natural History and the Bureau of Land Management in the Upper Cretaceous Kaiparowits Formation, in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah, has yielded remains of at least three new ceratopsid dinosaur taxa from multiple localities. Significant ceratopsid specimens excavated and collected from these localities provide the basis of a taphonomic study of ceratopsian deposition in the Kaiparowits Formation. Most ceratopsian remains in the formation represent isolated specimens preserved by rapid burial within fluvial channels and are likely to be preserved as associated or partially articulated specimens. Rare specimens preserved in fine-grained overbank or pond sediments are much more likely to be disarticulated and decomposed than those in fluvial channel settings. The Kaiparowits Formation preserves no evidence of mass monodominant centrosaurine bonebeds like those found in the coeval Dinosaur Park and Two Medicine Formations; however, a single monodominant chasmosaurine bonebed at UMNH locality 942 may be due to behavioral or paleoenvironmental influences, and may represent a link with other Campanian chasmosaurine localities in the southern Western Interior Basin. Trends in taphonomic modes and signatures from ceratopsian localities in the Kaiparowits Formation provide useful means of comparing preservation of these taxa with others found in coeval formations in Alberta and Montana.

Item ID: 18190
Item Type: Book Chapter (Research - B1)
ISBN: 978-0-253-35358-0
Date Deposited: 26 Jun 2012 02:49
FoR Codes: 04 EARTH SCIENCES > 0403 Geology > 040308 Palaeontology (incl Palynology) @ 100%
SEO Codes: 97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970104 Expanding Knowledge in the Earth Sciences @ 100%
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