Dinosaurs in Space and Time: The Geological Setting

Extract

The title of this chapter makes a promise that cannot be kept: that somehow there could be summarized in its few pages all the paleoenvironments of dinosaur-bearing strata through time. Dinosaurs were –as far as can be determined – ubiquitious in the terrestrial realm. It would be impossible to summarize the Recent terrestrial settings of birds (avian dinosaurs), let alone 135 million years of terrestrial settings. For this reason, this paper will be restricted to generalizations about ancient environments, highlighting particularly interesting or productive dinosaur-bearing localities in North America.