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

在本项目中，学生将进行野外考察，以描述怀俄明州大角盆地上侏罗纪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背景，化石的环境，以及保存在那里的生物的苍白生态。学生们将在霍普学院的赞助下工作，与明尼苏达大学德卢斯分校、克兰布鲁克科学研究所和辛辛那提自然历史博物馆的人员合作。知识价值。莫里森组的恐龙出现在几个分散的遗址群中，这些遗址群代表了各种各样的沉积环境。该项目位于莫里森地层北段的大角盆地，是一个尚未充分研究的集群的一部分。尽管该遗址出土了不寻常的恐龙化石，包括兽脚亚目恐龙牙齿和关节蜥脚类恐龙遗骸，但其古环境尚未得到研究。了解项目地点苍白的环境背景、恐龙动物群以及与大角盆地集群其他地点的关系，将提高对该地区的认识，并使大角盆地与莫里森地层中更知名的地区进行更公平的比较。这些比较将为认识苍白环境的时空异质性以及整个地层的苍白生态和地理差异提供更坚实的基础。

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.