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The plant fossil record during the Cretaceous documents a major transition in the dominant group of terrestrial autotrophs, as plant communities from the earlier Mesozoic were transformed by the appearance and rapid diversification of angiosperms. This transformation began in the Early Cretaceous, continued through the Late Cretaceous, and led ultimately to the dominance of angiosperm in most terrestrial ecosystems today, which had profound consequences for the other organisms inhibiting terrestrial ecosystems and perhaps the planet as a whole. Our understanding of angiosperm diversification has been greatly improved over the past 50 years by integrated studies of fossil assemblages containing angiosperm pollen and leaves, but especially by new information from mesofossil floras that have provided previously unanticipated detail on floral form in Cretaceous angiosperms and have allowed the recognition of key dispersed pollen types in situ . Information from fossil flowers has greatly facilitated meaningful comparisons with living plants and integration with phylogenetic analyses of extant angiosperms based on DNA evidence. The combined insights from these discoveries provide a broadly consistent and coherent picture of angiosperm evolution through the Cretaceous, which comprises more than half of their entire evolutionary history.
The plant fossil record during the Cretaceous documents a major transition in the dominant group of terrestrial autotrophs, as plant communities from the earlier Mesozoic were transformed by the appearance and rapid diversification of angiosperms. This transformation began in the Early Cretaceous, continued through the Late Cretaceous, and led ultimately to the dominance of angiosperm in most terrestrial ecosystems today, which had profound consequences for the other organisms inhibiting terrestrial ecosystems and perhaps the planet as a whole. Our understanding of angiosperm diversification has been greatly improved over the past 50 years by integrated studies of fossil assemblages containing angiosperm pollen and leaves, but especially by new information from mesofossil floras that have provided previously unanticipated detail on floral form in Cretaceous angiosperms and have allowed the recognition of key dispersed pollen types in situ . Information from fossil flowers has greatly facilitated meaningful comparisons with living plants and integration with phylogenetic analyses of extant angiosperms based on DNA evidence. The combined insights from these discoveries provide a broadly consistent and coherent picture of angiosperm evolution through the Cretaceous, which comprises more than half of their entire evolutionary history.
Over the past thirty years, exploration of the terrestrial Mesozoic section in Utah has resulted in a more than fivefold increase in the known species of dinosaurs. A highly resolved temporal and sequence stratigraphic framework for these strata is facilitating the utility of these newly discovered dinosaur assemblages in geologic, evolutionary, paleoecologic, and paleogeographic research. Local subsidence due to salt tectonics in the northern Paradox Basin is responsible for this region of eastern Utah preserving basal Cretaceous dinosaur faunas, known nowhere else in North America, that document paleobiogeographic connections across the proto-North Atlantic with Europe. The more medial Cretaceous strata west of the San Rafael Swell, in central Utah, preserve a unique dinosaur assemblage on an isolated North America. These strata also record the first immigration of Asian dinosaurs into North America and the last occurrences of a number of endemic North American dinosaur lineages. Through the Late Cretaceous, extensive, fossiliferous floodplain deposits are exposed in the high plateaus of southern Utah within the Grand Canyon Bight on the western side of the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway. Research on microvertebrate sites has resulted in a diverse record of vertebrate life substage by substage through most of the Upper Cretaceous sequence. Particularly, rich dinosaur-bearing beds through the Campanian have resulted in the discovery of many new dinosaur species distinct from the coeval dinosaur-bearing beds farther north along the western coast of the Western Interior Seaway in Montana and Alberta. The further development of these numerous rich dinosaur assemblages will provide the basis for considerable research in the future.
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