Are There Too Many Sauropods in the Morrison Formation?

Read the Paper here: royalsocietypublishing.org/do...

[@miquelescribanoivars5049]

Or MAYBEEEE... Morrison's large outcrop area and several million year spanning thickness (roughly equal to the gap between the Late Campanian Dinosaur Park Formation and the Late Maastrichtian Scollard Formation, for example) actually shows us a snippet of how diverse Dinosaurs truelly were, with many species being so temporally and regionally restricted to the point that any hiatus in strata masks the true diversity of the group massively.

[@KayentaRojo]

Agreed!

[@RaptorChatter]

Oh yeah, that was sort of what I touched on at the end of the video. That the Morrison was deposited over millions of years, and Amphicoelias being a valid genus really does suggest that there was more diversity than might be expected.

[@tomparker8282]

Spot on

[@charlesmartin1121]

Very good point I must say.

[@Grand_History]

Affirmative bias is a thing tho. Some people are desperate to get to name their own dinosaur

[@bkjeong4302]

Darren Naish went and did a thorough overview of this situation. Short answer: no, we don’t have too many sauropods. A lot of people seem to miss that mammalian megafauna diversity until very recently (as in, into evolutionary modern times) was actually pretty high.

[@RaptorChatter]

Yep, and that's the conclusion that these authors come to as well

[@thefisherking78]

Too bad they were so delicious

[@MaryAnnNytowl]

"Went and did?" Much better and more concise to just say "did," instead. 🤨😉😄

[@vjbele]

You usually speak so fast in your other videos, but this one was great! You really slowed down and explained the topic. Keep it up!

[@RaptorChatter]

Yeah, I have a bad habit of talking fast. It's definitely something I need to work on.

[@BartJBols]

@@RaptorChatter i still find it quite fast, i slowed down the video. Its good to be aware of these things though.

[@groque1654]

Another small paleontology channel I've never heard of. I see KZbin's starting to get its recommendations right. love seeing these small channels grow as the quality goes up.

[@RaptorChatter]

Thanks! Glad you've liked the content!

[@floweryomi5351]

Every time you say Diplodocus and anything related i flash through the 9 rings of hell. Awesome videos though! I love these. Keep it up!

[@adamtruong1759]

0:12 Wait, THAT'S THE MORRISON FORMATION?!? I thought it was like a section of river with many rock mounds surrounding it similar to Hell Creek, then once I learned the Morrison was a collection of many ecosystems at different times, I began to think it was the size of like 5-8 Yellowstone national parks. I didn't expect it to be to span into 13 different states/provinces. The sheer size of the Morrison actually makes it more believable that many of the sauropods lived in completely different areas and time periods within the ~7 million years the formation has captured.

[@RaptorChatter]

Yeah, it's basically the size of the he Mississippi River Basin. So it's from rivers and streams about that size, though potentially a drier dry season.

[@charlesmartin1121]

The real question is how many Sauropod taxa were living roughly contemporaneously with each other and in what paleoenvironments? That would get at the real diversity of Sauropods a given Late Jurassic landscape could accommodate. A very good paper on this topic has been done for the Dinosaur Park Formation of the Late Cretaceous of Canada.

[@RaptorChatter]

Yeah it would be interesting. Unfortunately I don't think there's been a ton of high resolution stratigraphy work through the different areas of the Morrison Fm to find out. I know there's been a lot of correlating members, but I think that kind of study really would need to be more precise than that.

[@charlesmartin1121]

@@RaptorChatter A single productive horizon, tracable over a large area could provide a reasonable picture of contemporaneous diversity. I have dug in the Morrison of the Big Horn Basin, and there are some localities in that area which have the potential to yield an excellent picture of diversity over a tightly constrained span of time. Particularly, the Howe Quarry, and even more so one immediately north of it worked for a few decades now by a commercial Swiss team.

[@MaryAnnNytowl]

I'm finally catching some of the videos I hadn't seen before, and really enjoying having a whole queue of them! 🙃🙂👍 They're just too darned short! 😄

[@rileyernst9086]

I'd like to point out as a supporting factor that the morrision had quite a large variation in enviroments, with humid riverine forests of kauris and sequias, to fern praries with brachyphilum trees, dryer pine woodlands to what would seem to be cypress and Cheirolepid dominated wooded deserts in the south. Variation in enviroment helps support diversity, even in large and likely nomadic animals.

[@RaptorChatter]

Yep. I didn't quite get into the environmental diversity, but hopefully mentioning the scale got that across to most viewers. I really don't se a reason why it wouldn't be possible to have so many.

[@dennismason3740]

In the fifties we had a saying, which I now pass on to you. You can never have too many sauropods. The words "quality", "stubborn", "robust" and the phrase "the key to everything" are now officially declared non-existent by the Cliche Patrol.

[@shannon9993]

I feel like this title would be magnificent set to music.

[@MaryAnnNytowl]

You place the emphasis on a different syllable of Diplodocus than I've heard before, and that's surprising, since I'm on the wrong side of 50, and that's a lot of years of hearing the word being said. 🤨🤔 I find that interesting! Has there been a change in the preferred pronunciation?

[@fenrirgg]

Good, maybe there are a lot more sauropods there, keep digging! Now!

[@vladline1882]

The next question is, why the heck they're all gone to north America during late cretaceous? Replaced by one from the south

[@blockmasterscott]

This looks like a good place to ask about something that I have been confused about for a while, so I'm hoping someone can help me. Is Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus the same or are they 2 totally different types of sauropods? I tried researching myself, but the material is often in scientific language, and I struggle a bit with that.

[@RaptorChatter]

That's an interesting one. Originally they were found during "the Bone Wars", when Cope & Marsh were trying to out compete each other by finding more fossils. One found Apatosaurus, and the other, later found Brontosaurus. Because they were partial other researchers thought that they were the same genus. Many years later, a researcher had the time and funding to double check, and found that they were different enough to reinstate Brontosaurus as a valid genus. So currently both are their own types of valid dinosaur.

[@blockmasterscott]

@@RaptorChatter Ok, that makes sense, thanks for taking the time to explain this, very much appreciated!

[@doppelhelixes]

after learning how well ducks can hybridise - same with chicken - yeah maybe dinos could hybridise as well as birds....

[@yoursotruly]

Too many sauropods, not enough cowbell!

[@davidletasi3322]

Little by little more paleontologists are considering all these species of sauropods as posible growth stages of a few species as better more complete specimens are discovered. New research at the Dana quarry in Wyoming is providing much better specimens.

[@RaptorChatter]

I hope so. I will fully admit I'm not a sauropod guy, so I'm not familiar with all the quarries in the Morrison, but growth stages sound cool, I do know there was a young Diplodocus a while ago, but hadn't heard anything other than that.

[@raccoonresident5760]

There are just the right amount in the formation!

[@RaptorChatter]

I agree. It's just interesting, because in a lot of places today biodiversity has dropped a lot, so our perspective on what biodiversity should be in the fossil record is a bit warped, even when considering the evidence that these at least mostly seem to be valid species.

[@raccoonresident5760]

@@RaptorChatter oh ic. If it helps? Barrie Canada here representing theropods and “The first paleo map in Canada” here. This place I call “the city of bones.” It’s built on deposits like I’ve never seen...

[@stevenbaumann8692]

There could be too many. You have to remember the Morrison is as much as 750 feet thick and deposited over 10 million years. That’s a lot of time for evolution to do it’s work. If many sauropods traveled through it and had similar behavior, it makes sense. Im other words, I agree with you.

[@RaptorChatter]

Yeah, with all that, plus the massive amount of distance it covers it seems pretty reasonable.

[@picksalot1]

How likely is it for the gigantic bones of Sauropods to survive for millions of years? I'd think big bones are much likely to survive than small ones, particularly considering how dense and heavy they must be. They are likely to sink into and below whatever substrate they were initially deposited.

[@RaptorChatter]

Yes they are more likely to survive, but the problem is that when the animal is that large it is very hard to bury the entire thing. So that means that many of the bones would still be exposed, and erode away before they could be preserved.

[@picksalot1]

@@RaptorChatter Thanks for the reply. I've only recently discovered your Channel, and have been enjoying the high quality of your content. 👍

[@RaptorChatter]

@@picksalot1 well thanks! Glad you've been enjoying it.

[@chaotix5513]

nah lets have more lol

[@maryseeker7590]

Aren’t we lucky to have “too many sauropods”!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m going to be traveling in the area of that formation! What types of sedimentary beds should I look for???

[@RaptorChatter]

There's a lot honestly. The fossils are mostly in mudstones, but again, there's a lot of those in the area. The region has many fossil bearing formations. I'm sure there's some areas where collecting fossils (especially inverts) is fine, but I'd check the area you're going specifically. There's a lot of faults associated with the uplift of the Rockies, so the sediments can vary pretty greatly depending on where specifically you are.

[@dboot8886]

Im sorry om having trouble understanding the title... the concept of "Too Many Dinosaurs" is just... i cant even phathom the concept I'm sorry.

[@j.nereim9055]

Is "too many sauropods" even possible? I constantly think there are NOT ENOUGH. Yeay saurpods!

[@BartJBols]

Maybe sauropods were very different between genders?

[@RaptorChatter]

They could be, but it's really hard to tell if a particular fossil was one sex or the other, so it's really hard to know.

[@honkykong610]

@Vincent Magnin Imagine thinking dinosaurs gave a shit about social norms. Gender is more than accurate when referring to their biological sex, especially when you take into account you are on the internet dealing with laymen not tenured archeologists and paleontologists.

[@funwithfish1507]

@@honkykong610 Bart didn’t want to say sex

[@Grand_History]

Yeah it seems strange to have over 20 species of sauropods at the same time in the same size range that only a single species of bison occupies today.

[@portugueseeagle8851]

It's not at the same time, though, as it spans several million years, with some species not existing with another

[@Grand_History]

@@portugueseeagle8851 that’s why I only said 20

[@RaptorChatter]

Like Portuguese Eagle said, it's over a period of about 10 million years, so there's some reasonable expectation that there could be a lot of diversity. It also has a lot of large theropods: Allosaurus species, Saurophaganax, Torvosaurus, etc. So there might be some late migration to the region from other parts of the world. Again, the sauropods aren't really found alongside each other. There are some places they are, like Dinosaur National Monument, which has 4 species, but in general they're fairly isolated from one another.

[@Grand_History]

@@RaptorChatter I’m aware. But the point still stands

[@RaptorChatter]

@@Grand_History for today sure, but even 50,000 years ago there were bison, mammoths, camellias and more, so it's not totally out of the realm of possibility to have that many dinosaur taxa in an area.

[@Scrinwaipwr]

Morrison is Sauropod Land.

[@RaptorChatter]

It really is. There's so many.

[@nickkorkodylas5005]

THE GUY WHO CAME UP WITH _"AMPHICOELIAS BRONTODIPLODOCUS"_ DID NOTHING WRONG!