Late Cretaceous Environments

["Dino Rampage" <dino_rampage@hotmail.com>]

Guess I've got many, many questions today : )

1) What dinosaurs are known from the Late Cretaceous of the eastern half of 
North America? There's Hadrosaurus, Dryptosaurus and Coelosaurus, but I 
can't find anything else. It's odd that the eastern half was so much bigger 
than the western half in the Late Cretaceous, yet so few dinosaurs have been 
discovered. I'm sure that the taxa on this side were just as diverse, unique 
and as fascinating.

2) What sort of vegetation was predominant in the Hell Creek Formation?? My 
general impression was that the lowlands were mainly pplains covered in a 
mix of low-growing herbs, shrubs & a ground cover of mainly ferns and herbs. 
River banks & marshes would have been full of horsetails & aquatic ferns, 
while the waters would have their own aquatic plants, with water lilies, 
water hyacinth & duckweed-like plants on the surface. Swamp cypresses too. 
There would be forests & woodlands, made up mainly of angiosperm and some 
conifer trees (like ginkgo, sequoia & metasequoia), and the entire setting 
would be somewhat subtropical, almost like a rainforest, like the florida 
everglades, or maybe the dry seasonal forests of India. The higher the 
latitude, the more the forests would resemble modern deciduous forests, with 
fewer tropical species. The highlands would have conifer forests & alpine 
meadows where mosses & hardy ferns grew. How true is this? Or is the Hell 
Creek more like how Jack Horner portrays it, desolate wastelands punctuated 
by ever-decreasing islands of greenery?

3) I need information on the climate, geography, & vegetation of the 
following Formations (I need stuff like: wet or dry? tropical or temperate? 
highland or lowland? seasonal or evergreen? rivers, swamps or floodplains? 
what types of vegetation?)

Two Medicine, Judith River, Horseshoe Canyon, Javelina, Kirtland, Fruitland, 
Hell Creek & the general New Jersey area)



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