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Showing results for tags 'megalosaurida'.
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Unusual Hell Creek Formation fossilized tooth record
Joseph Fossil posted a topic in Questions & Answers
I've recently found a, how do I say...quite unusual Theropod dinosaur tooth from the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation (67-66.0 Million Years ago). The paper, titled The occurrences of vertebrate fossils in the Deadhorse Coulee Member of the Milk River Formation and their implications for provincialism and evolution in the Santonian (Late Cretaceous) of North America by Derek Williams Larson, is a record of theropod teeth from various Late Cretaceous formations in Western North America, and buried on page 244 of the report an apparent megalosauridae tooth (UCMP120305) from the Hell Creek Formation (67-66.0 Million Years ago). https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/54e305be-de2a-4529-adc9-4e6b038ae699/view/28ba15f8-8131-44be-b48f-e4e9648db26e/Larson_Derek_Fall_2010.pdf This for me is pretty unusual as Megalosauridae (as far as we know) lived only between the Middle-Late Jurassic (170-145 Million Years ago), millions of years before the Maastrichtian Cretaceous. I know in the past many theropod dinosaurs were described as species of "Megalosaurus", but that was more around the 1800-early 1900s and the citation for the tooth lists its apparent phylogenetic description as recently as 2008. There was also another less confusing but fascinating description of a Dromaeosauridae tooth (UALVP48462) from the Milk River Formation, which apparently has a tooth crown height of 17.3mm. But besides the pretty fascinating Milk River Dromeosauridae tooth, I'm puzzled about the UCMP120305 specimen! I really skeptical this tooth specimen belongs to megalosauridae. But if it's not, then where could the classification of the specimen have come from? What do you guys think?- 4 replies
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- hell creek formation
- late creteaceous
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