David Marjanovic wrote:
We all know about Hell Creek, but what other faunas or formations
have been described at the time of the KT event?
Terrestrial ones? Not many. Some intertrappean bed or other
somewhere in
India; however the formation in the Nanxiong Basin in southern
China is
called; and to the north of the Hell Creek, there's the Lance and
the
Scollard, AFAIK. That pretty much is it so far.
The Frenchman Formation of Saskatchewan also extends up and through
the
K/Pg. Note that at any given spot in the American West the boundary
might
be within the Hell Creek or slightly above.
I do not believe a South American terrestrial latest Maastrichtian
fauna
yet identified. In Europe some (in France and in Transylvania) get
close
but not up to the end. David mentions the Nanxiong and the
Intertrappean
Beds of western India it may be that a K/Pg boundary layer could be
found
in the Amur Valley but at present I don't think it has been found.
New
Zealand has boundary terrestrial deposits, but only (s)crappy
dinosaurian
fossils (great plants, though). There are boundary deposits in
Antarctica,
but again no dinosaurian fauna that can be really characterized. I
don't
know if there are late Maastrichtian dinosaurs yet known from
Africa or
Australia. The dinosaurian-bearing units of Madagascar don't get
quite
that young.
--
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu Phone: 301-405-4084
Office: Centreville 1216
Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
Fax: 301-314-9661
Faculty Director, Earth, Life & Time Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite/
Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park
Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843
Mailing Address: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Department of Geology
Building 237, Room 1117
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742 USA