Mesozoic in Wisconsin-Minnesota

[bwitzke@gsbth-po.igsb.uiowa.edu]

     Jason Spindler's question about the absence of dinosaurs in Indiana 
     prompted Jon Woolf to correctly explain the absence of Mesozoic strata 
     there (Digest 145).  However, he also stated that there are no 
     Mesozoic strata in other Midwest places like Illinois-Kentucky and 
     Wisconsin-Minnesota.  Russ Jacobson corrected by noting Cretaceous 
     strata in the Mississippi Embayment of Illinois-Kentucky, with a 
     nearby hadrosaur occurrence across the River in southeast Missouri.  
     Indeterminate Campanian hadrosaur bones have also been identified a 
     short distance downstream in western Tennessee.
     
     I'd like to add that Cretaceous fluvial and residual strata of the 
     Windrow Formation are also known in western Wisconsin, and the 
     possibility of bone in these outliers is not unreasonable.  More 
     importantly, Minnesota has an extensive exposure of mid Cretaceous 
     nonmarine and marine strata that has produced a variety of fossils, 
     including vertebrates.  A possible hadrosaur bone tidbit (Turonian) 
     has been mentioned to me from the Milbank-Ortonville area of western 
     Minnesota, but I haven't yet examined the specimen.  That area has 
     produced a diverse array of marine reptile and fish material.  The 
     possibility of dinosaur fossils in Minnesota seems quite real.