3. The Dinosaur Park Formation

The Dinosaur Park Formation contains the bulk of the articulated dinosaur material from Southern Alberta, and the exposures of the Dinosaur Park Formation in the Manyberries area maintain this pattern.  Articulated specimens include a skeleton of the ceratopsian Styracosaurus collected from the Sage Creek locality, and the skeleton of the hadrosaur Lambeosaurus magnacristatus collected by C. M. Sternberg.  In addition, an unusually large skull of a centrosaurine ceratopsian was collected from the Manyberries area.  This skull was named Monoclonius lowei.  Monoclonius is a name that has been used for ceratopsian skulls that are now interpreted as juvenile.  It may be a juvenile of a taxon in which the adult is not known, or it may be an adult that retained characters restricted to juveniles in other species of ceratopsians. 

Although the assemblage of dinosaurs from the Manyberries area is less well documented than that of Dinosaur Park, it is of extreme interest because it points to patterns of distribution that suggest a high level of complexity in the dinosaur populations of southern Alberta during the Cretaceous.  One of the similarities in these two areas is a succession of Centrosaurus and Styracosaurus through the sequence.  This pattern could result from two kinds of ceratopsians following each other in time, or it could have resulted from the two taxa tracking changing environments.  Since the distribution in the Manyberries area mirrors that in Dinosaur Park, even though differences in environments are present, the former explanation is more likely.  Once that is established, the question is raised as to whether one species moved in and replaced the other from a different geographic area, or whether one species evolved into the other.  Answering these questions will be possible, but will require additional specimens be located and documented. 

A unique locality at the very top of the Dinosaur Park Formation in the area south of Manyberries is preserved in an estuarine channel.  This locality has been intensely studied since it is very rich in fossils and appears to present a snapshot of a single environment that is little modified by mixing and reworking.  The estuarine channels, are broad, mud-filled channels. Abundant vertebrate microfossil localities are preserved at the base of the channels.  The assemblages of these localities are unusual in containing abundant fish remains and rare remains of terrestrial vertebrates.  The estuary was an environment in which water moved very slowly, and most of the sedimentation was from fine-grained muds deposited from suspension.  The result is that small-articulated remains are found more often than is normally the case.  Turtles are one of the groups that are well represented by articulated remains in these beds.  A beautiful shell of a soft-shelled turtle was found in these beds in 2000.  The previous year, a skeleton of an Adocus containing eggs, and with the articulated limbs and neck and shell was collected.

 © 2007 The Southern Alberta Dinosaur Research Group.