For the February 21 session of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology’s 2019 Speaker Series, Dr. Greg Erickson (Florida State University) will present “Faunal Composition,
Provinciality and Paleobiology of a Late Cretaceous Arctic Vertebrate Assemblage Revealed
Through Cross-Latitudinal Comparisons.”
Dr. Erickson’s fieldwork in northern Alaska has produced numerous dinosaur, mammal, and bird fossils, nearly all of which are new to science. These fossils have greatly expanded our understanding of the different types of animals with backbones found in the Late Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation. Comparisons to animals from lower latitudes led Dr. Erickson and colleagues to conclude that the Prince Creek Formation fossils represent a formerly unrecognized, high-latitude community that they named the Paanaqtat Province. They discovered conspicuous growth lines in Arctic dinosaur teeth, and long bones that are not found in close relatives from lower latitudes. Along with growth comparisons, this provides the first data indicating dinosaurs were non-migratory, year-round Arctic inhabitants, and were likely
Endothermic.
Dr. Erickson will discuss the first rigorous testing of polar dinosaur biogeography, life history, and physiology from the Late Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation of northern Alaska.
This presentation will not be live-tweeted or published on YouTube due to ongoing research.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum’s Speaker Series talks are free and open to the public. Presentations are given in the Museum auditorium every Thursday at 11:00 a.m. until April 25. Speaker Series talks are also available on the Museum’s YouTube channel at: www.youtube.com/c/RoyalTyrrellMuseumofPalaeontology.
