Late-surviving New Mexican dinosaurs illuminate high end-Cretaceous diversity and provinciality

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Flynn, Andrew G.; Brusatte, Stephen L.; Chiarenza, Alfio Alessandro; Garcia-Giron, Jorge; Davis, Adam J.; Fenley, C. Will; Leslie, Caitlin E.; Secord, Ross; Shelley, Sarah; Weil, Anne; Heizler, Matthew T.; Williamson, Thomas E.; Peppe, Daniel J.
• 署名单位: New Mexico State University; Smithsonian Institution; Baylor University; University of Edinburgh; University of London; University College London; University of Oulu; Universidad de Leon; Exxon Mobil Corporation; University of Nebraska System; University of Nebraska Lincoln; University of Lincoln
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.adw3282
• 发表日期: 2025-10-23
• 页码: 400-404
• 关键词: SAN-JUAN BASIN; HELL CREEK REGION; PALEOGENE BOUNDARY; VERTEBRATE RECORD; WESTERN INTERIOR; mass extinction; ASTEROID IMPACT; FAUNAL CHANGES; fossil record; ROCK RECORD

摘要

It has long been debated whether non-avian dinosaurs went extinct abruptly or gradually at the end-Cretaceous (66 million years ago), because their fossil record at this time is mostly limited to northern North America. We constrain a dinosaur-rich unit to the south, the Naashoibito Member in New Mexico, to the very latest Cretaceous (similar to 66.4 to 66.0 million years), preserving some of the last-known non-avian dinosaurs. Ecological modeling shows that North American terrestrial vertebrates maintained high diversity and endemism in the latest Cretaceous and early Paleogene, with bioprovinces shaped by temperature and geography. This counters the notion of a low-diversity cross-continental fauna and suggests that dinosaurs were diverse and partitioned into regionally distinct assemblages during the final few hundred thousand years before the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact.