Cretaceous Mongolia

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)

The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted.
Find sources: "Cretaceous Mongolia" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Cretaceous Mongolia" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

(Learn how and when to remove this message)

Cretaceous Mongolia is one of the best preserved of all Mesozoic ecosystems. The shifting sand of what was, even then, the Gobi Desert have ensured that fossils of the animals that lived there can be found in exactly the position in which they were buried, with most of the bones together. The most notable fossil, dubbed the Fighting Dinosaurs, is the very well preserved remains of a Velociraptor, locked in combat with a Protoceratops,[1] a small ceratopsian.[2]

## Dinosaurs in Mt. Altai

[edit]

Mt. Altai is unusual because the comparative lack of food means that most of the dinosaurs there remained quite small, most not much bigger than a present-day person.

There were a few large dinosaurs, though. Tarbosaurus was the Mongolian equivalent of Tyrannosaurus rex and was almost as large. The large herbivores grew into many strange shapes. Therizinosaurus was a bipedal herbivore about as tall as Tarbosaurus with a long neck, small head and characteristic long claws on the hands which it used for defence and to help it browse far away trees. Small ankylosaurs were the armour-plated residents and hadrosaurs provided large prey for the carnivores.

Unusual prehistoric animals, such as the Oviraptor, fed on many of the same things that Velociraptor did. The two species often competed for food.

The Gobi Desert was often interspersed with scrubland and occasionally a dense rainforest supporting many types of plant life, insects, and small dinosaurs like Shuvuuia and Mononykus. Mononykus, Shuvuuia and the Velociraptor were among the dinosaurs that are taxon related to modern birds.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Kielan-Jaworowska, Z.; Barsbold, R. (1972). "Narrative of the Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions, 1967-1971" (PDF). Palaeontologia Polonica. 27: 1−12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-05-20.
2. ^ Tereshchenko, V.S. (2021). "Axial Skeleton of Subadult Protoceratops andrewsi from Djadokhta Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Mongolia)". Paleontological Journal. 55 (12): 1408–1457\. Bibcode:2021PalJ...55.1408T. doi:10.1134/S0031030121120030 – via GeoRef (EBSCO).

This paleontological site article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

|

* v
* t
* e

This Mongolia-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

|

* v
* t
* e

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template