MADP is digging in regions that very few, if any, people have collected vertebrate fossils from before, which means that the things we discover in the mountains of Alberta are new to everyone! Here you can learn about where we’re digging, and what Alberta was like during the Cretaceous.
Ancient Alberta
During the late Cretaceous, the Western Interior Seaway divided North America in half from the arctic through to the Gulf of Mexico. Alberta lay along the western coast of this new seaway as a part of the land mass called Laramidia. Because of this, the arid farmland of Alberta today was originally a lush coastal forest full of tree-ferns, cypress, and redwoods. Picture the cedar rainforests of British Columbia, mixed in with the New Zealand bush, all situated on the floodplains of the Indian Ganges River Delta – that’s Cretaceous Alberta!
Crocodilians, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, turtles, and many other vertebrates thrived in these ecosystems, and were so widespread that we find their bones in both rural badlands like Dinosaur Provincial Park, and city parks in Edmonton! As a result, paleontologists know a lot about these coastal floodplains and forests that many animals called home.
Despite the amount of information that has been discovered about the palaeontology in Alberta, part of the story is missing. During the late Cretaceous, the Rocky Mountains were forming, creating new ecosystems in the upland regions west of the coastal environments. Vertebrate fossils from these mountainous ecosystems are difficult to find, and prior to 2018, consisted of only a few drawers of specimens housed in three different museums; the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, and the vertebrate palaeontology collections at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
The primary focus of MADP are the Brazeau (80-66.5 mya) and Coalspur (66.5-64.5 mya) formations. Fortunately, these two formations span the same time interval as the formations in the plains of Alberta, providing an opportunity to better understand late Cretaceous ecosystems in Alberta. When our time allows, we are also investigating older formations in the foothills including the Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous Nikanassin Formation, Lower Cretaceous Cadomin, Gladstone, Moosebar, and Gates formations, and the Upper Cretaceous Blackstone, Cardium, and Wapiabi formations. Of all formations of interest, to date, only the Cadomin and Brazeau formations have ever yielded dinosaur fossils.
Further information
- Coalspur Formation
- Brazeau Formation
- Blackstone, Cardium, and Wapiabi formations: To be explored!
- Cadomin, Gladstone, Moosebar, and Gates formations: To be explored!
- Nikanassin Formation: To be explored!