ABSTRACTS
wHAT ARE THEY?
Abstract Fossil-bearing terrestrial strata of Campanian age are widespread in the Western Interior Basin of North America and contain some of the world’s best known and most diverse dinosaurian faunas. More than 30 Campanian megafloras have been found from Texas to the Arctic, but our understanding of the vegetation they represent is poor because it is based on outdated 19th- and early 20th-century collections and studies. Nonetheless, these megafloral assemblages provide paleoclimate estimates that correlate with latitude
and vegetation patterns that follow geographic barriers. Recent work on newly discovered sites since the early 1980s is largely unpublished or is focused on describing a few taxa or the nonangiosperm portion of the flora. We have discovered and extensively sampled 10 new megafloral sites from the upper Campanian Kaiparowits Formation (~76–74 Ma) in the exposure known as The Blues near Escalante, Utah. Results from a single, precisely dated (~75.69–75.72 Ma) site suggest that the flora of the Kaiparowits is exceptionally diverse (87 morphotypes) and dominated by angiosperms (62 dicot leaf morphotypes) that grew in a subtropical, megathermal, and relatively wet climate (mean annual temperature ~20°C and mean annual precipitation ~1.8 m). The palynoflora of the formation is correspondingly diverse and contains several paleoenvironmental indicators that suggest the formation was deposited in a slow-moving freshwater environment. Overall, the Kaiparowits flora has similarities to other Western Interior Campanian floras and some Maastrichtian floras; it hosts a diverse aquatic component mirroring the high abundance and diversity of aquatic vertebrate and invertebrate fossils in the formation. This element of the flora corroborates the sedimentological interpretation that the Kaiparowits Formation was deposited in a lowland floodplain with extensive ponding.
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and vegetation patterns that follow geographic barriers. Recent work on newly discovered sites since the early 1980s is largely unpublished or is focused on describing a few taxa or the nonangiosperm portion of the flora. We have discovered and extensively sampled 10 new megafloral sites from the upper Campanian Kaiparowits Formation (~76–74 Ma) in the exposure known as The Blues near Escalante, Utah. Results from a single, precisely dated (~75.69–75.72 Ma) site suggest that the flora of the Kaiparowits is exceptionally diverse (87 morphotypes) and dominated by angiosperms (62 dicot leaf morphotypes) that grew in a subtropical, megathermal, and relatively wet climate (mean annual temperature ~20°C and mean annual precipitation ~1.8 m). The palynoflora of the formation is correspondingly diverse and contains several paleoenvironmental indicators that suggest the formation was deposited in a slow-moving freshwater environment. Overall, the Kaiparowits flora has similarities to other Western Interior Campanian floras and some Maastrichtian floras; it hosts a diverse aquatic component mirroring the high abundance and diversity of aquatic vertebrate and invertebrate fossils in the formation. This element of the flora corroborates the sedimentological interpretation that the Kaiparowits Formation was deposited in a lowland floodplain with extensive ponding.
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