Re: K-T question

[Phillip Bigelow <bh162@scn.org>]

On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Stanley Friesen wrote:

> At 11:40 AM 6/1/00 -0600, Caleb wrote:
> >Gang,
> >
> >    Out of curiosity, was the plant life near the K-T boundary dwindling too?
> >What was it doing before, at, and after the boundary? Also, just another 
> >quick
> >question, are there any known dinosaur specimens from the Middle East?
> Tricky question.
> 
> The flora of the Lance and Hell Creek is decidedly less tropical in nature 
> than that of the underlying formations, and thus has a lower 
> diversity.  There is also some evidence of a subtle change in the flora 
> towards the top of the Hell Creek, though I do not remember the details.


According to Kirk Johnson, the flora of the Hell Creek Fm shows evidence
of a couple of cooling periods and a couple of warming periods.  As far as
I know, the stratigraphic zones in which these flora/climate changes have
been documented have not yet been corrolated with dinosaur taxonomic
diversity (e.g., temporary declines/increases in diversity) or changes in
dinosaur fossil numbers (which may or may not be associated with dinosaur
paleopopulation changes within these particular zones).  It may not be
do-able (some field project proposals look better in print than they do
when actually attempted), but if it is possible to test, it could make a
neat MS thesis project for someone! Maybe I should add it to my list of
suggested projects, found at: 

http://www.scn.org/~bh162/suggested_research.html
 

Although the following does not address Caleb's question, here is an
abstract that Kirk Johnson wrote a couple years ago on the flora of the
middle part of the Hell Creek Formation (BTW: break out the bongs, kids,
'cause the Hell Creek Fm. has some righteous weed!)

http://www.ou.edu/cas/botany-micro/bsa-abst/section8/abstracts/17.shtml


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