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Journal of Paleontology

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THE FIRST PACHYCEPHALOSAURINE (DINOSAURIA) FROM THE PALEO-ARCTIC OF ALASKA AND ITS PALEOGEOGRAPHIC IMPLICATIONS

¹ University of Alaska Museum, 907 Yukon Drive, Fairbanks 99775-6960, <ffrag@uaf.edu>,
² Dallas Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 150349, Dallas, Texas 75315, <Tfiorillo@dmnhnet.org>,
³ Arctic Rim Research, 1749 Red Fox Drive, Fairbanks, Alaska 99709, <arcticrim@ptialaska.net>

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

	INTRODUCTION

 
THE LAST 15 years of field work along the beaches and bluffs of the Colville River, on Alaska's Arctic Coastal Plain, have produced a diverse record of high-latitude dinosaurs. Seven families and eight genera are documented with several other families and genera possibly being represented by less diagnostic remains and only a few scattered elements (Table 1; Nelms, 1989; Gangloff, 1994, 1998; Fiorillo et al., 1999; Fiorillo and Gangloff, 2000, 2001). Virtually all of the common major groups of theropods and ornithopods typical of the Late Cretaceous of northern North America are present. Most of the skeletal remains are found in rocks assigned to the Prince Creek Formation of the Colville Group (Detterman et al., 1963, 1975; Phillips, 1990). The diversity of the dinosaur record in Alaska has been significantly increased with the discovery of abundant tracks and trackways along the North Slope and Arctic Coastal Plain over the last six years. The majority of the ichnofossil record is contained in various terrestrial coal-bearing rocks assigned to the Early Cretaceous Nanushuk Group (Ahlbrandt et al., 1979). The dinosaur biozone spans the upper part of the Nanushuk group and all of the Colville Group, ranging from the mid to Late Cretaceous (Albian to Maastrichtian; Mull, 1985). The already diverse and abundant record of dinosaur skeletal fossils was increased by the discovery in 1999 of the first evidence of pachycephalosaurs from this region (Fig. 1). This taxon is now represented by a nearly complete left squamosal and the contiguous, posterior, basal part of the dome. The highly thickened bone with characteristic prismatic internal structure accompanied by the distinctive ornamentation diagnostic of this group allows for an unequivocal identification to the subfamily level. The specimen (UAM . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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