Sunday, February 18, 2018

[Paleontology • 2018] The Nemegt Basin — One of the Best Field Laboratories for Interpreting Late Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems


A herd of Saurolophus angustirostris moves along a river bank after a storm in the Cretaceous Nemegt Basin. The feet of the large herbivores sink into the soft sediment crushing the skull of a Tarbosaurus bataar that was lying in the mud.

 Illustration based on specimen MPC-D107/05 collected at the Nemegt locality (Nemegt Formation) and discovered by J.Ed. Horton. Artwork by Davide Bonadonna.


in 
Fanti, Bell, Currie & Tsogtbaatar, 2018. 
  Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 494

Highlights
• The Nemegt Basin is perhaps the most important fossil-bearing region of Mongolia.
• The unique fossils of Mongolia have sparked an explosion of illegal fossil poaching in the country.
• We introduce multidisciplinary methodologies to understand the Cretaceous Nemegt ecosystem.
• We discuss biotic response to local and large-scale Nemegt paleocological dynamics.

 Keywords: Mongolia, Late Cretaceous, Paleoecology, Stratigraphy, Vertebrate paleontology

Fig. 1: A herd of Saurolophus angustirostris moves along a river bank after a storm in the Cretaceous Nemegt Basin. The feet of the large herbivores sink into the soft sediment crushing the skull of a Tarbosaurus bataar that was lying in the mud. Illustration based on specimen MPC-D107/05 collected at the Nemegt locality (Nemegt Formation) and discovered by J.Ed. Horton.
Artwork by Davide Bonadonna. 

  Federico Fanti, Phil R. Bell, Philip J. Currie and Khishigjav Tsogtbaatar. 2018. The Nemegt Basin — One of the Best Field Laboratories for Interpreting Late Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems [Dedicated to Ryszard Gradziński, Ivan Antonovĭc Efremov, and Demchig Badamgarav whose pioneer work unraveled the unique Late Cretaceous Nemegt ecosystems.]. [in Federico Fanti, Phil Bell, Philip Currie and Khishigjav Tsogtbaatar (eds.). 2018. The Late Cretaceous Nemegt Ecosystem: Diversity, Ecology, and Geological Signature.Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 494; 1-4. DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2017.07.014 
ResearchGate.net/publication/318444365_The_Nemegt_Basin