REU Site Investigation: Paleoenvironmental characterization of a dinosaur site in the Morrison Formation of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming

在这个项目中，学生们将进行实地考察，以描述怀俄明州比格伦盆地上侏罗世恐龙遗址的苍白环境。遗址分析的主要目标是了解遗址的地层环境、化石所在的环境以及保存在那里的生物的苍白生态。学生将在希望学院的赞助下，与明尼苏达大学德卢斯大学、克兰布鲁克科学研究所和辛辛那提自然历史博物馆的工作人员合作。智力上的优点。莫里森组中的恐龙分布在代表各种沉积环境的几个分散的遗址群中。该项目遗址是莫里森组北部比格伦盆地一个未被研究的集群的一部分。尽管该遗址发现了不同寻常的恐龙化石，包括兽脚类恐龙的牙齿和有关节的蜥脚类恐龙化石，但其古环境背景尚未得到研究。了解项目地点苍白的环境背景、恐龙动物群以及与比格伦盆地集群中其他地点的关系将提高对该地区的了解，并使比格伦盆地与莫里森组更知名的地区之间进行更公平的比较。这些对比将为认识苍白环境中的时间和空间异质性以及整个地层中苍白的生态和攻击性变化提供更坚实的基础。

ABSTRACT In this project, students will conduct fieldwork to characterize the pale environmental setting of an Upper Jurassic dinosaur site in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming. The primary goals of the site analysis are to understand the stratigraphic setting of the site, the environments hosting fossils, and the pale ecology of the organisms preserved there. Students will work under the auspices of Hope College, in cooperation with personnel from the University of Minnesota Duluth, the Cranbrook Institute of Science, and the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History. Intellectual merit. Dinosaurs in the Morrison Formation occur in several scattered clusters of sites that represent a wide variety of depositional settings. The project site is part of an understudied cluster in the Bighorn Basin, at the northern reaches of the Morrison Formation. Although the site has yielded unusual dinosaur fossils including theropod teeth and articulated sauropod remains its paleoenvironmental setting has not been examined. Understanding the project site's pale environmental setting, dinosaur fauna, and relationship to other sites in the Bighorn Basin cluster will improve knowledge of the region and allow more equable comparisons between the Bighorn Basin and better-known regions across the Morrison Formation. These comparisons will provide a firmer basis for recognizing temporal and spatial heterogeneity in pale environments as well as pale ecological and taphonomic variation across the formation.