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Trace fossils on dinosaur bones reveal ecosystem dynamics along the coast of eastern North America during the latest Cretaceous

Direct evidence of paleoecological processes is often rare when the fossil record is poor, as in the case of the Cretaceous of eastern North America. Here, I describe a femur and partial tibia shaft assignable to theropods from two Late Cretaceous sites in New Jersey. The former, identifiable as the...

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Autor principal: Brownstein, Chase D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6001717/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29910985
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4973
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author Brownstein, Chase D.
author_facet Brownstein, Chase D.
author_sort Brownstein, Chase D.
collection PubMed
description Direct evidence of paleoecological processes is often rare when the fossil record is poor, as in the case of the Cretaceous of eastern North America. Here, I describe a femur and partial tibia shaft assignable to theropods from two Late Cretaceous sites in New Jersey. The former, identifiable as the femur of a large ornithomimosaur, bears several scores interpreted as shark feeding traces. The tibia shaft has punctures and flaked bone from the bites of mid-sized crocodyliforms, the first documented occurrence of crocodyliform traces on dinosaur bone from the Maastrichtian of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The surface of the partial tibia is also littered with indentations interpreted as the traces of invertebrates, revealing a microcosm of biological interaction on the coastal seafloor of the Cretaceous Atlantic Ocean. Massive crocodyliforms, such as Deinosuchus rugosus and the slightly smaller Deltasuchus motherali, maintained the role of terrestrial vertebrate taphonomic process drivers in eastern North America during the Cretaceous. The report of crocodyliform bite marks on the ornithomimosaur tibia shaft in this manuscript reinforces the importance of the role of crocodyliforms in the modification of terrestrial vertebrate remains during the Cretaceous in North America. The preserved invertebrate traces add to the sparse record of the presence of barnacles and other marine invertebrates on dinosaur bone, and the evidence of shark feeding on the ornithomimosaur femur support the “bloat-and-float” model of terrestrial vertebrate fossil deposition in marine deposits from the Cretaceous of eastern North America.
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spelling pubmed-60017172018-06-15 Trace fossils on dinosaur bones reveal ecosystem dynamics along the coast of eastern North America during the latest Cretaceous Brownstein, Chase D. PeerJ Ecology Direct evidence of paleoecological processes is often rare when the fossil record is poor, as in the case of the Cretaceous of eastern North America. Here, I describe a femur and partial tibia shaft assignable to theropods from two Late Cretaceous sites in New Jersey. The former, identifiable as the femur of a large ornithomimosaur, bears several scores interpreted as shark feeding traces. The tibia shaft has punctures and flaked bone from the bites of mid-sized crocodyliforms, the first documented occurrence of crocodyliform traces on dinosaur bone from the Maastrichtian of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The surface of the partial tibia is also littered with indentations interpreted as the traces of invertebrates, revealing a microcosm of biological interaction on the coastal seafloor of the Cretaceous Atlantic Ocean. Massive crocodyliforms, such as Deinosuchus rugosus and the slightly smaller Deltasuchus motherali, maintained the role of terrestrial vertebrate taphonomic process drivers in eastern North America during the Cretaceous. The report of crocodyliform bite marks on the ornithomimosaur tibia shaft in this manuscript reinforces the importance of the role of crocodyliforms in the modification of terrestrial vertebrate remains during the Cretaceous in North America. The preserved invertebrate traces add to the sparse record of the presence of barnacles and other marine invertebrates on dinosaur bone, and the evidence of shark feeding on the ornithomimosaur femur support the “bloat-and-float” model of terrestrial vertebrate fossil deposition in marine deposits from the Cretaceous of eastern North America. PeerJ Inc. 2018-06-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6001717/ /pubmed/29910985 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4973 Text en ©2018 Brownstein http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Brownstein, Chase D.
Trace fossils on dinosaur bones reveal ecosystem dynamics along the coast of eastern North America during the latest Cretaceous
title Trace fossils on dinosaur bones reveal ecosystem dynamics along the coast of eastern North America during the latest Cretaceous
title_full Trace fossils on dinosaur bones reveal ecosystem dynamics along the coast of eastern North America during the latest Cretaceous
title_fullStr Trace fossils on dinosaur bones reveal ecosystem dynamics along the coast of eastern North America during the latest Cretaceous
title_full_unstemmed Trace fossils on dinosaur bones reveal ecosystem dynamics along the coast of eastern North America during the latest Cretaceous
title_short Trace fossils on dinosaur bones reveal ecosystem dynamics along the coast of eastern North America during the latest Cretaceous
title_sort trace fossils on dinosaur bones reveal ecosystem dynamics along the coast of eastern north america during the latest cretaceous
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6001717/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29910985
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4973
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