Overview
https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=819B08...
Watching the video Telling the Dinosaur Story: Part 3 Cretaceous Period showed us the importance of the Hell Creek Formation. What conditions do you think allowed for the exceptional preservation of the fossils and ecosystem that dinosaurs lived in? Why are fossil sites like Dinosaur Ridge, Hell's Creek Formation, and the Morrison Formation so incredibly important to our understanding of dinosaurs and how they lived? What else did you learn from the video or the dinosaur in the news articles for the Cretaceous Period? In addition to answering these questions please respond to at least two other students posts.
also please respond to these 2:
1-Its definitely hard for us to imagine much of the interior of the United States as coastal land. However, this is exactly the types of areas that places like the Hell's Creek Formation and Dinosaur ridge were. Because these areas used to be coastal regions, this allowed for the preservation of so many fossils because of the large amounts of sediment in the area.
These areas such as Dinosaur Ridge, Hell's Creek Formation, and the Morrison Formation are so important to our understanding of dinosaurs and the periods they lived in general. Through these fossils, we can infer how the dinosaurs lived and interacted with the environment around them. we can also learn about the vegetation of the area at that time and how it influenced the lives of the dinosaurs.
The most interesting thing that I learned from the articles and the video is that the sea levels of the oceans were so significantly higher than they are today that areas such as the inland United States could become coastal areas. This is a prime example of how climate and plate tectonics can have a substantial impact on the land that life lives on.
2-These two famous fossil sites in America hold a great significance in our understanding of the Mesozoic era simply because of how well preserved fossils in these areas are; and no, not just dinosaur fossils but the remains of other prehistoric fauna such as fish, mammals, insects etc… as the guy in the video put it, a whole ecosystem is preserved in a capsule of sediment which gives us a better understanding of what the environment was like during the time of the dinosaurs. Why are fossils so well preserved in these formation as oppose to others in the country? The two formations in question are in located Colorado and Montana, yet even though these states are in the middle of the US-100s of miles away from any coast line whatsoever, if we look back all the way to the Late Cretaceous period, we find out that many states in the middle of the US were either under water or no longer land locked thanks to the Western Interior Seaway. Essentially the middle of North America was split in half, and in there in the center laid an ocean. That signifies that at one point in time, Montana and Colorado (As well as other neighboring states) all had their own beaches that were of course inhabited by dinosaurs and other prehistoric fauna. The environment in proximity of the interior sea way is seen as the direct reason as to why we find an abundance of well preserved specimens in these formations.