Laramidia Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
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Laramidia
This cache is place with permission from Nick (Curator of Education - Kenosha Public Museum) & Dan (Director Kenosha Museum System)
Laramidia is a name coined by J. David Archibald in 1996 to describe an island continent that existed during the Late Cretaceous period (99.6–65.5 Ma), when the Western Interior Seaway split the continent of North America in two.
In the Mesozoic Era, Laramidia was an island land mass separated from Appalachia to the east by the Western Interior Seaway. The seaway eventually shrank, split across the Dakotas, and retreated towards the Gulf of Mexico and the Hudson Bay. The masses joined to unite the North American continent.
Geography:
Laramidia stretches from modern-day Alaska to Mexico. The area is rich in dinosaur fossils. Tyrannosaurs, dromaeosaurids, troodontids, hadrosaurs, ceratopsians (including Kosmoceratops and Utahceratops), pachycephalosaurs, and titanosaur sauropods are some of the dinosaur groups that lived on this landmass.
Range:
Vertebrate fossils have been found in the region from Alaska to New Mexico.
Fauna:
From the Turonian age of the Late Cretaceous to the very beginning of the Paleocene, Laramidia was separated from Appalachia to the east. As a result, the fauna evolved differently on each land mass over that time. Geological conditions were generally favorable for the preservation of fossils in Laramidia, making the western United States one of the most productive fossil regions in the world. Less is known about Appalachian biodiversity in the Cretaceous as few fossiliferous deposits exist in the region today and many fossil beds in Appalachia were destroyed during the Pleistocene ice age.
In Cretaceous North America the dominant predators were the tyrannosaurs, huge predatory theropods with proportionately massive heads built for ripping flesh from their prey. In Laramidia the top of the terrestrial food chain was occupied by the tyrannosaurine tyrannosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex, Edmontosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus. The bodies of tyrannosaurine tyrannosaurs exhibited huge heads and legs while the forelimbs resembled steak forks: small and usually having only two-fingered. Tyrannosaurs were the dominant predators in Appalachia too, but rather than the massive , the dryptosaurs clawed digits. Appalachian tyrannosaurs, known as dryptosaurine tyrannosaurs, had more in common with basal tyrannosaurs like Dilong and Eotyrannus: long arms with three clawed digits, longer skulls, more slender and smaller bodies.
Another common group of North American dinosaurs were the hadrosaurs. The fossil record shows a staggering variety of hadrosaur forms in Laramidia.
Other differences in genera appear between the island land masses. Sauropods roamed Laramidia during the Cretaceous after apparently dying out in Appalachia. Nodosaurs, though, appear to have been more plentiful in Appalachia. Nodosaurs were large, herbivorous armored dinosaurs resembling armadillos. They were scarce in Laramidia by the late Cretaceous, existing only in specialized forms like Edmontonia and Panoplosaurus. The number of nodosaur scutes that have been found in eastern North America suggests these armored dinosaurs were still going strong in Appalachia.
(Source Wikipedia.com)
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If you are interested in learning more about Dinosaurs, check out my other dinosaur caches "Dinosaurs A-Z".
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Guvf pnpur nggnpurq gb n ureoviber fanpx
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