We made a mistake! At around 02:05 Blake says that Anchisaurus was about 6 meters long, when it was actually about 6 feet long. Thank you to everyone watching closely enough to catch that!
Lets not forget we generally eat dinosaurs on a regular basis. Poor poor T Rex went from being the king of the dinosaurs to being make into a Mc Chicken.
That area belonged to Indians earlier. I doubt they used money. Maybe instead of squirrel skins they had dinosaur skin to trade. 2 T-Rex forskins for a month in a small windowless building I'd say
It's very interesting to think about how important random chance has been in understanding dinosaurs. The right fossils, at the right times, emerging to be seen by the right people with the right scientific knowledge. That's a lot of things to have to go right! And I'm very glad that they did and that you all do such a brilliant job telling us about them!
Right. A huge chunk of their diversity is lost to us. You will see the same fossil beds mentioned over and over again. Our picture of the Mesozoic comes from a hand full of peepholes at particular times and places. And then there are environments unlikely to produce fossils at all that come times have the most odd creatures. The deep sea and small volcanic islands tend to get recycled into the crust.
@@durkadann2943so true, and things that we could have fossils of that we'll never deduce! Like the sexes of the specimens, or even whether they were species vs hybrids of related species!
A few years ago I walked a couple miles into Gettysburg to see the Dinosaur Bridge- A small footbridge with dinosaur tracks in the stones used to build it. I was amazed to find the stones had been sourced from a quarry only a few miles away- I had assumed they came from far out of state. The only fossils I'd ever been familiar with from my state were plant or marine. It was exciting to learn we had so much more!
You mean, I had to tour empty fields where I could hear tales of how thousands of people died terrible, violent deaths and get ice cream afterwards… and I could have been examining dinosaur tracks?!? Childhood wasted.
@@mikamekaze That should be someone's next creative writing assignment (the Blue Boy Ghost story was invented as a creative writing assignment by a student in the 90s who lived in Stevens (the dorm of the story). Gettysburg is a hub for ghosts, the bridge is haunted by the spirits of the dinosaurs whose footprints got used in construction. Next big Asylum movie: Confederates VS Dinosaurs
Not dinosaur related, but one of the coolest East Coast fossils shown to me was of an intact clam at Bacon's Castle near Williamsburg, Virginia. The guide explained that finding an intact clam instead of just a shell meant it was buried alive and fossilized. It was dated from the 35-mya meteor impact that helped shape the Chesapeake Bay.
I live in SW Virginia and we don't see a lot of dinosaur fossils in Appalachia because the Appalachian mountains absolutely dominated the subcontinent throughout the mesozoic. People don't realuze that the Appalachian mountains today are just the barest weathered ankles of what they used to be, the Appalachian mountains used to be larger than the Alps and throughout the Mesozoic they were in their errosion phase, which is why dinosaur finds in the east are almost exclusively found at the coasts or in river mouths like in New Jersey, Alabana or the Chesapeake Bay. Around here, we find a lot of fossils from the archeozoic and paleozoic, like sea creatures, coal and limestone, because the Appalachian mountains used to be sea floor, and lots of fossils from the cenozoic (stuff that hasn't been gone that long like mastodon teeth)
When I was a youth, paleontologists were in the habit of speaking in absolutes. They would say things like "Dinosaurs were slow and cold blooded" and "Not related to birds." This language seriously undermined their credibility. I'm glad this has been recognized and the language replaced with more flexible choices.
@@Popcornchicken42 I think you don't really understand my comment. If someone states something as a fact, and it is found to be wrong, it undermines their credibility. If someone states something as a theory, and the theory is found to be wrong, it does not undermine their credibility.
@@Popcornchicken42credibility to people who think like mathematicians, chemists, physicists or statistitians. Whoever is used to having either absolute proof or having to demonstrate things with repeatable experiments will doubt the certainty on the words for a field that can never get either alone. Hence why the language changed over time to convey to students that historical fields work on hypothesis through available information and you have to always remember your samples are biased by preservation factor you don't know from the start. A statistician is expected to talk in possibilities because we have data without having the mechanics or being able to replicate the underlying conditions. So are now the expectations over history and paleontology =)
To be fair, most dinosaurs were not directly related to birds. Further, “undermining credibility” is a rather post hoc charge considering the lack of data for them to arrive at closer approximations to truth. We have discovered and learned more about their relationships and biology in the last 30-40 years than in all the time since they were first being described in science journals 200 years ago. Data collection and synthesis takes time. Then, dissemination takes even more time.
Is it also possible that the early Appalachian Mountains also played a role in isolating dinosaurs to the east of them before the Interior Seaway opened? Remember, they were once the size of the Himalayas.
Exactly my thought too! The Appalachians are ancient and used to be way taller. And expect seeing dinosaurs there is like expecting seeing rhinos and elephants in the Himalayas
I would like to add a few things that I personally have learned when doing my research on Appalachian Biodiversity. For one the Newark Supergroup, while not containing a massive number of animals, has preserved several Aetosaurs, Psuedosuchians, and a few Archosauromorphs such as Rutiodon, Hypuronector (a weird little drepanosaur with a leaf shaped tail), Doswellia, Lucasuchus, Carnufex, and a unique species of Postosuchus (P. alisonae). Additionally in the Portland formation, there have been very few but interesting fossils that did preseve. Such as Podokesaurus, which was lost in a fire in 1917, Anchisaurus, which we have more than a handful of fossils from, as well as two interesting recent finds. One being the distal end of a humerous from a Theropod, which is more similar to the ones found in Crylophosaurus, than Dilophosaurus, as well as being much larger and denser than both of theirs. As well as the wrist bone of a Non-pterodactyloid Pterosaur, which is uniquely dense for a pterosaur wrist, potentially meaning it could be a forest dwelling pterosaur opposed to the more typical oceanic pterosaurs we know. Meanwhile the Late Cretaceous fossil beds are very interesting. As deinosuchus appears to be present throughout most of them, whereas the two know Appalachian large carnivores from the late cretaceous are rather small, with one Appalachisaurus fossil having Deinosuchus bite marks on it. Potentially pointing to Deinosuchus being the dominant predator of costal Appalachia during the Cenomanian. However because we are lacking a massive amount of Western Appalachian fossils with only a tantalizing amount from bloat and float specimens. We have no clue what lived in the western plains of Appalachia aside from a few scarce Hadrosaur and Nodosaur fossils. Speaking of Hadrosauroids, Appalachian Hadrosaurs appear to be split into three distinct groups. Small bodied Hadrosaurs such as Claosaurus which were 6 meters long or shorter. Medium sized Hadrosaurs such as Hadrosaurus which were anywhere from 6-10 meters long. And Edmontosaurus sized Hadrosauroids with the current only known examples of Parrosaurus and Hypsibema, which could be anywhere from (12-19) meters long. These massive Appalachian Hadrosauroids also have had a difficult problem in their placement on the hadrosaur family tree, potentially pointing to them forming their own distinct group of Appalachian Hadrosauroids. This refugia appears to have come to an end some time during the Maastrictian, as begining in Maastrictian age rocks, we have found distinctly Laramidian fauna. Such as a Ceratopsian tooth crown being found in Missouri. Or there being quite a few lambeosaur and saurolophine fossils being discovered in New Jersey. While the Hadrosauroid fossils at the same time appear to have become rarer. Though that might be because it is a costal enviroment with its own bias. Additionally an extremely fragmentary Lambeosaur, Hadrosaurid, and Tyrannosaur fossils was discovered in Maastrictian age rock from Nunavut Canada, showing just a glimpse into Arctic Appalachian fauna, though it is even more fragmentary than most Appalachian dig sites, which is saying a lot. I felt like adding this merely because I have become extremely interested in Appalachian fauna, especially since it so rarely gets covered at all. Despite us having at least two decent bone beds in Missouri and North Carolina. Them being the Tar Heel/ Coachmen Formation of North Carolina which has a wealth of fossils preserved with at least three Hadrosaurs, a Leptoceratopsid jaw, two Tyrannosauroids (Appalachiasaurus and a Dryptosauroid), two dromeosaurs (Saurornitholestes and a Deinonychus sized Dromeosaur), and some Nodosaur and Deinosuchus remains, and a still unamed Missouri bone bed that has preserved a Parrosaurus nesting ground, along with some fragmentary Tyrannosaur, Dromeosaur, and Ornithomimid remains. Sure Appalachian fauna are generally terribly preserved on account of most being sea deposits. But I think this video is a great way for people to start learning about Appalachian fauna. I just wanted to add some of what I know about them from just learning about them in my own time.
Very valuable and interesting comment, thank you. You are probably aware of the work of researchers Brownstein and McLean on the Cretaceous dinosaurs of Appalachia. With respect to Laramidian fauna in Appalachia during the last stage of the Cretaceous (the Maastrichtian): yes, the Western Interior Seaway closed from about 69-70 my ago, forming land-bridges that would have allowed an invasive migration of species, and indeed, as you point out, western taxa seem to have invaded Appalachia during the last 3 my or so of the Cretaceous.
I got to imagine too, we simply weren't looking for them before we built our cities on the east coast. A lot of major cities on the east coast were established before we the 1st dino bones were discovered unlike the west coast. Who knows how many are under Philly or Boston that people may have seen and just threw out not knowing what they were
On top of that, when the Atlantic Ocean opened almost right under the future sites of those cities, how many early dino fossils did that obliterate? The very hard igneous traprock formations throughout the NYC area (including those big rocks throughout Central Park and the New Jersey Palisades) and New England are testament to the geological violence of that event.
It makes me think of Time Team episodes where they're digging around farms and there's ancient round house foundations underneath years of tilling and human activity.
It makes sense when you look at the rock formations in the west the land was constantly building upon itself with sediment while the east coast is more forested grassland.
I just wrote my college application essay, and I think I should thank eons! Your videos are what inspired me to write about environmental changes throughout natural history, and I used your links to sources to fact check. So I guess thanks for helping me get into college soon!
Appalachia also seems to have been comparatively stable. Laramidia still had the Rocky Mountains piling up, constantly slightly changing the available biomes, or causing minor regional extinctions through volcanic eruptions or changes in rain/winds/rivers, which gave it a constantly shifting set of niches the animals there had to compete for. But over on Appalachia the biggest change was the initial increase in rain thanks to the Western Interior Seaway, and the slow erosion of its larger mountains - which didn't really change up the selection pressures, so existing species were largely working fine as they were.
I know that at least here in Nova Scotia, late Jurassic and Cretaceous sediments are mostly just offshore on the Grand Banks, and are thus underwater. Probably similar elsewhere on the East Coast as well.
So it's kinda like not seeing your old school buddies for a long time, and then when you finally see them again, they look pretty much exactly like you left them. Meanwhile, you've turned into a big T-rex...
@ecurewitz where glaciers end there're a lot of floodplains, lakes, and rivers afterwards carrying a lot of melted ice. As for glaciers, some reached the southern part of Indiana, which is further south than Pennsylvania. Due to topography, glaciers were not able to cover some areas of the continent.
I love this channel! School is so fun when watching it! ❤ I was wondering, could you make a video about what the world would be like today if humans never existed? I’ve wondered about this for a while, but I’ve never found an answer to my question.
Small note: by the start of the Maastrictian, the Western Interior Seaway was mostly gone, meaning that T.rex and its contemporaries would have been walking along the Atlantic coast.
🤣I was about to turn off the video when I heard the familiar “downy oshin” Bawlmer accent. I had even more fun when I heard you say you were from Pittsburgh (Picksberg as yinz say). Yep, I’m a western pa transplant to Maryland (Merlin) too. Left the home of chip chopped ham and pierogis for the home of the crab feast. But I’m so glad to hear about the cool dinosaurs from this area.
This was awesome. I propose you tackle why there are apparently no dinosaurs in areas like Indiana, but are rich in marine fossils from some 300mya. Thx!
During the few times where glaciers completely covered Indiana, the top layers of rock were removed and crushed. As glaciers receded, they left behind massive floodplains, rivers, lakes, and creeks that continued to remove sediment. Take a look at glaciers in Alaska or Greenland that stop on land. At the bottom of the glacier, you always see giant floodplains and streams. In some cases raging rivers.
My thoughts went automatically to imagining the east coast as a counterpart to early Cretaceous North Africa, but with species decedent from animals from the NA late Jurassic period.
I assumed the geology was the reason so few dinosaurs are known from the east. I’ve been collecting fossils since I was kid and living in the Mississippi basin, everything I find consist of bivalves, crinoids and the like. Either the Jurassic layer is eroded away or hasn’t been uplifted to the surface.
You know, until I saw this video, I wasn't really aware that the East Coast of North America had a big unconformity during the Mesozoic Era. If anything, , I think I just assumed fossils had been found there but had been overshadowed by all the big stuff coming out of the Western part of the continent. You hear so much about places like the Morrison Formation and so on that, unless it's highlighted with videos like this one, such absences simply slip under the radar, as it were. Then, when your notice is drawn to them it comes as a major surprise!
During the last stage of the Cretaceous, the Maastrichtian, the Western Interior Seaway finally closed again, allowing a migration of species. This final closure was from about 69-70 my ago, onward. And indeed, the are fragmentary remains indicating a migration of western taxa to the east, i.e. from Laramidia into Appalachia.
NC has volcanoes, but they're worn down to the roots. Morrow Mountain is interesting because it was, essentially, an industrial site for making stone tools.
I live near a footprint site in Holyoke MA. I visit and high-five the prints regularly. Especially the ones that look like they could be from Dilophosaurus
Growing up in Pennsylvania I was told the valleys around the state were made by the same glaciers that made the great lakes. I always assumed they were responsible for some of the lack of fossils having moved mass amounts of earth and washed away what was left when they receded.
"East coast has weird dinosaurs" meanwhile west coast: has a dinosaur with 3 horns, quills on the back and a shield on top of the head... and a cockatoo-like beak...
Of course Nico Robin would be a supporter of a serious archeology oriented channel. (My apologies if this was a case of real and fictional names overlapping, but I just felt it had to be said.)
I LOVE that at the end you acknowledge that many time fossils were on indigenous lands and were “discovered” wrongly. And that you give credit to those Peoples
I really think that you should make a video about how plants continents and animals will evolve in the future. We learn a lot about the past in your videos, it can help to predict the future for sure ! Love your work btw ♥️
Thank you for making this! I really hope we find out more about Appalachia in the future, it's too interesting to not want to learn more about. EDIT: Also, Anchisaurus from my understanding was only 2 meters long at most, not 6 meters like you said at 2:05.
Is it possible that the geology of the east coast and west coast were similar to today? The east coast being generally more forested while the west having more open plains. Would it make sense that the evolution into larger dinosaurs was impacted by more open space while smaller versions could navigate more densely forested regions?
It’s crazy to think how much has simply been lost to time and there’s nothing we can do about it. Even in the places we have tons of dinosaur fossils, there’s probably tons more that never fossilized. At the same time, imagine all the wonderful animals that existed. All the weird dinosaurs, mammals, pterosaurs, anything. There could’ve been ecosystems just as insane as the Morrison or Hell Creek that we’ll never know about.
@3:00 there is geological evidence that eastern & western north-america where separated at one point by a body of water. During what period, can't remember. But YT as great vids on it.
The Western Interior Seaway existed from the early Late Cretaceous (100 Ma) to the earliest Paleocene (66 Ma), and it is mentioned & shown in this video, and others by PBS Eons.
We made a mistake! At around 02:05 Blake says that Anchisaurus was about 6 meters long, when it was actually about 6 feet long. Thank you to everyone watching closely enough to catch that!
nice woke disclaimer lol
shout out to the following tribes that happened to be living where fossils were found lolll wtf
At least there were not sauropod sauropodomorphs that big, right?
Lets not forget we generally eat dinosaurs on a regular basis. Poor poor T Rex went from being the king of the dinosaurs to being make into a Mc Chicken.
No one's gonna mention the stock fottage of Chicago while talking about NYC?
Maybe rent in NY was too high
Rent is too damn high! 🥾
They went extinct so their descendants won’t have to suffer 😂
That area belonged to Indians earlier. I doubt they used money. Maybe instead of squirrel skins they had dinosaur skin to trade. 2 T-Rex forskins for a month in a small windowless building I'd say
@@TheGeishakuulaThey used wampum shell beads as money
they just needed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps
Absolutely loving that Appalachia is just extremely weird even on a geological level.
Ur name is unique too. I dont think I heard or read Auren before :3
Yes! We get cool culture, beautiful land ,AND awesome old history. So awesome!
Lol I love the Blue Ridge, it's literally my bakyard. So strange, so gorgeous.
They’re some of the oldest mountains in the world so they’ve seen a thing or too.
Have you ever heard of the pervatasaurus leroyi???
It's very interesting to think about how important random chance has been in understanding dinosaurs. The right fossils, at the right times, emerging to be seen by the right people with the right scientific knowledge. That's a lot of things to have to go right! And I'm very glad that they did and that you all do such a brilliant job telling us about them!
Right. A huge chunk of their diversity is lost to us. You will see the same fossil beds mentioned over and over again. Our picture of the Mesozoic comes from a hand full of peepholes at particular times and places. And then there are environments unlikely to produce fossils at all that come times have the most odd creatures. The deep sea and small volcanic islands tend to get recycled into the crust.
its wild to think about what didn't go right, and all the things that we don't know about as a result.
@@durkadann2943so true, and things that we could have fossils of that we'll never deduce! Like the sexes of the specimens, or even whether they were species vs hybrids of related species!
true.
A lot of fossils especially early ones were found more by locals on accident not scienctist
A few years ago I walked a couple miles into Gettysburg to see the Dinosaur Bridge- A small footbridge with dinosaur tracks in the stones used to build it. I was amazed to find the stones had been sourced from a quarry only a few miles away- I had assumed they came from far out of state. The only fossils I'd ever been familiar with from my state were plant or marine. It was exciting to learn we had so much more!
How did I live there for 4 years and never heard of that? Next time I visit I'll have to go see it!
Okay, that is an awesome footbridge, and I wish I'd known about it that one time my family visited Gettysburg.
You mean, I had to tour empty fields where I could hear tales of how thousands of people died terrible, violent deaths and get ice cream afterwards… and I could have been examining dinosaur tracks?!? Childhood wasted.
@@mikamekaze That should be someone's next creative writing assignment (the Blue Boy Ghost story was invented as a creative writing assignment by a student in the 90s who lived in Stevens (the dorm of the story). Gettysburg is a hub for ghosts, the bridge is haunted by the spirits of the dinosaurs whose footprints got used in construction.
Next big Asylum movie: Confederates VS Dinosaurs
3:42 as someone who lives in Maryland, it's kind of an honor to have Acrocanthosaurus be discovered there
I live in MD too, it's not everyday that you hear that such a cool dinosaur was found here!!
@@goobhatestomatoes Let's gooo
fellow Maryland resident!
I wanna know more about my specific area of Maryland. Like, why does the land look like it does
Omg I love acrocanthosaurus and I also have lived in MD my whole life! Love theropods in general. I got a dilophosaurus skull tattooed on me (:
Astrodon is our StTe Dinosaur!
I did my senior capstone project in college on Appalachian dinosaurs. Appalachia has lots of paleo-biodiversity that needs to be explored further!
The East Coast, West Coast rivalry goes way further back then some folks know. 🦎
Fascinating! I’m an East Coaster and I’ve often wondered why we have found so few dinosaurs here.
The east coast dinosaur roars were assumed to sound like “FOOORRRRRGEEETTTABBBBOUUUTTTIITTTT’
LOL, either that or an F-bomb
@@michaelblacktreewhich is why they’re basically never shown nor mentioned in documentaries!!
"Deinonychus? Ova heeere"
IMWALKINHERE
The top half maybe..
The bottom go like..
Yee..haw!
Its the Appalachians after all.
Not dinosaur related, but one of the coolest East Coast fossils shown to me was of an intact clam at Bacon's Castle near Williamsburg, Virginia. The guide explained that finding an intact clam instead of just a shell meant it was buried alive and fossilized. It was dated from the 35-mya meteor impact that helped shape the Chesapeake Bay.
We find them by the dozens here in eastern NC along with scallops, pectins, and other bivalves.
I live in SW Virginia and we don't see a lot of dinosaur fossils in Appalachia because the Appalachian mountains absolutely dominated the subcontinent throughout the mesozoic. People don't realuze that the Appalachian mountains today are just the barest weathered ankles of what they used to be, the Appalachian mountains used to be larger than the Alps and throughout the Mesozoic they were in their errosion phase, which is why dinosaur finds in the east are almost exclusively found at the coasts or in river mouths like in New Jersey, Alabana or the Chesapeake Bay. Around here, we find a lot of fossils from the archeozoic and paleozoic, like sea creatures, coal and limestone, because the Appalachian mountains used to be sea floor, and lots of fossils from the cenozoic (stuff that hasn't been gone that long like mastodon teeth)
I'm not sure, but I'm blaming Suge Knight for the East Coast Dinosaurs deaths.
I understood that reference
I was gonna say they’re in Florida and D.C., but, your 30 year old music industry beef reference might be less inflammatory.
Actually it was Diddy 😂
That's a popular theory. Personally I subscribe to the idea of the P Diddy 'Baby Oil Event'.
What a horrible cataclysm to imagine.
Diddy did it
Nico Robin being am Eontologist makes a lot of sense.
When I was a youth, paleontologists were in the habit of speaking in absolutes. They would say things like "Dinosaurs were slow and cold blooded" and "Not related to birds." This language seriously undermined their credibility. I'm glad this has been recognized and the language replaced with more flexible choices.
Credibility to who? You mean as we look back with new evidence and theories? I think that is just called progress.
@@Popcornchicken42 I think you don't really understand my comment. If someone states something as a fact, and it is found to be wrong, it undermines their credibility. If someone states something as a theory, and the theory is found to be wrong, it does not undermine their credibility.
T.Rex could still run 9-27mph wich is pretty scary when you realize how much evolution favorited this absolute beef tank.
@@Popcornchicken42credibility to people who think like mathematicians, chemists, physicists or statistitians.
Whoever is used to having either absolute proof or having to demonstrate things with repeatable experiments will doubt the certainty on the words for a field that can never get either alone.
Hence why the language changed over time to convey to students that historical fields work on hypothesis through available information and you have to always remember your samples are biased by preservation factor you don't know from the start.
A statistician is expected to talk in possibilities because we have data without having the mechanics or being able to replicate the underlying conditions. So are now the expectations over history and paleontology =)
To be fair, most dinosaurs were not directly related to birds. Further, “undermining credibility” is a rather post hoc charge considering the lack of data for them to arrive at closer approximations to truth. We have discovered and learned more about their relationships and biology in the last 30-40 years than in all the time since they were first being described in science journals 200 years ago. Data collection and synthesis takes time. Then, dissemination takes even more time.
I can't not picture the east coast dinosaurs just quietly moving into the hollers of Kentucky, playing dino-banjos and forming jug bands.
Dueling Banjos, tyrannosaurid and therapsid. I can see it now.
And unlike many geographical features, those hollers were there when the dinosaurs were.
Is it also possible that the early Appalachian Mountains also played a role in isolating dinosaurs to the east of them before the Interior Seaway opened? Remember, they were once the size of the Himalayas.
Right, and the Appalacians themselves would have been both a poor environment to live on, and a poor preservation environment.
Exactly my thought too! The Appalachians are ancient and used to be way taller. And expect seeing dinosaurs there is like expecting seeing rhinos and elephants in the Himalayas
The best host talking about one of the coolest dinosaur mysteries that I've pondered over many years, only one minute in and I'm so excited!!!
Ankylosaurus - also my favourite. It’s just a tank of an animal! Love it
And they're kind of cute.
@ they so are 🫶
I would like to add a few things that I personally have learned when doing my research on Appalachian Biodiversity.
For one the Newark Supergroup, while not containing a massive number of animals, has preserved several Aetosaurs, Psuedosuchians, and a few Archosauromorphs such as Rutiodon, Hypuronector (a weird little drepanosaur with a leaf shaped tail), Doswellia, Lucasuchus, Carnufex, and a unique species of Postosuchus (P. alisonae).
Additionally in the Portland formation, there have been very few but interesting fossils that did preseve. Such as Podokesaurus, which was lost in a fire in 1917, Anchisaurus, which we have more than a handful of fossils from, as well as two interesting recent finds. One being the distal end of a humerous from a Theropod, which is more similar to the ones found in Crylophosaurus, than Dilophosaurus, as well as being much larger and denser than both of theirs. As well as the wrist bone of a Non-pterodactyloid Pterosaur, which is uniquely dense for a pterosaur wrist, potentially meaning it could be a forest dwelling pterosaur opposed to the more typical oceanic pterosaurs we know.
Meanwhile the Late Cretaceous fossil beds are very interesting. As deinosuchus appears to be present throughout most of them, whereas the two know Appalachian large carnivores from the late cretaceous are rather small, with one Appalachisaurus fossil having Deinosuchus bite marks on it. Potentially pointing to Deinosuchus being the dominant predator of costal Appalachia during the Cenomanian. However because we are lacking a massive amount of Western Appalachian fossils with only a tantalizing amount from bloat and float specimens. We have no clue what lived in the western plains of Appalachia aside from a few scarce Hadrosaur and Nodosaur fossils.
Speaking of Hadrosauroids, Appalachian Hadrosaurs appear to be split into three distinct groups. Small bodied Hadrosaurs such as Claosaurus which were 6 meters long or shorter. Medium sized Hadrosaurs such as Hadrosaurus which were anywhere from 6-10 meters long. And Edmontosaurus sized Hadrosauroids with the current only known examples of Parrosaurus and Hypsibema, which could be anywhere from (12-19) meters long. These massive Appalachian Hadrosauroids also have had a difficult problem in their placement on the hadrosaur family tree, potentially pointing to them forming their own distinct group of Appalachian Hadrosauroids.
This refugia appears to have come to an end some time during the Maastrictian, as begining in Maastrictian age rocks, we have found distinctly Laramidian fauna. Such as a Ceratopsian tooth crown being found in Missouri. Or there being quite a few lambeosaur and saurolophine fossils being discovered in New Jersey. While the Hadrosauroid fossils at the same time appear to have become rarer. Though that might be because it is a costal enviroment with its own bias.
Additionally an extremely fragmentary Lambeosaur, Hadrosaurid, and Tyrannosaur fossils was discovered in Maastrictian age rock from Nunavut Canada, showing just a glimpse into Arctic Appalachian fauna, though it is even more fragmentary than most Appalachian dig sites, which is saying a lot.
I felt like adding this merely because I have become extremely interested in Appalachian fauna, especially since it so rarely gets covered at all. Despite us having at least two decent bone beds in Missouri and North Carolina. Them being the Tar Heel/ Coachmen Formation of North Carolina which has a wealth of fossils preserved with at least three Hadrosaurs, a Leptoceratopsid jaw, two Tyrannosauroids (Appalachiasaurus and a Dryptosauroid), two dromeosaurs (Saurornitholestes and a Deinonychus sized Dromeosaur), and some Nodosaur and Deinosuchus remains, and a still unamed Missouri bone bed that has preserved a Parrosaurus nesting ground, along with some fragmentary Tyrannosaur, Dromeosaur, and Ornithomimid remains.
Sure Appalachian fauna are generally terribly preserved on account of most being sea deposits. But I think this video is a great way for people to start learning about Appalachian fauna. I just wanted to add some of what I know about them from just learning about them in my own time.
High Valued comment!🙏🏻🙏🏻
Awesome. Thanks.
Very valuable and interesting comment, thank you.
You are probably aware of the work of researchers Brownstein and McLean on the Cretaceous dinosaurs of Appalachia.
With respect to Laramidian fauna in Appalachia during the last stage of the Cretaceous (the Maastrichtian): yes, the Western Interior Seaway closed from about 69-70 my ago, forming land-bridges that would have allowed an invasive migration of species, and indeed, as you point out, western taxa seem to have invaded Appalachia during the last 3 my or so of the Cretaceous.
Wonderful and informative comment, many thanks! 👍
Thanks for the great comment! I'm gonna look more into some of the things you mentioned
whoever made their name Nico Robin, I love you
"...the Newark Supergroup..."
I'm imagining a Family Guy-style hard cut to a bunch of dinosaurs in a huge arena, singing ABBA in New Jersey accents.
The east-coast preserving old fauna as isolated island continent sounds a lot like the American Australia xD
I got to imagine too, we simply weren't looking for them before we built our cities on the east coast. A lot of major cities on the east coast were established before we the 1st dino bones were discovered unlike the west coast. Who knows how many are under Philly or Boston that people may have seen and just threw out not knowing what they were
On top of that, when the Atlantic Ocean opened almost right under the future sites of those cities, how many early dino fossils did that obliterate? The very hard igneous traprock formations throughout the NYC area (including those big rocks throughout Central Park and the New Jersey Palisades) and New England are testament to the geological violence of that event.
It makes me think of Time Team episodes where they're digging around farms and there's ancient round house foundations underneath years of tilling and human activity.
@@aplaceinthestars3207 wasn't there a family redoing their garden like a couple months ago and they dug down to roman tiles
It makes sense when you look at the rock formations in the west the land was constantly building upon itself with sediment while the east coast is more forested grassland.
I dunno about dinosaurs in Boston, but I heard there was a pretty cool Dinosaur Jr. in Amherst.
I just wrote my college application essay, and I think I should thank eons! Your videos are what inspired me to write about environmental changes throughout natural history, and I used your links to sources to fact check. So I guess thanks for helping me get into college soon!
Appalachia also seems to have been comparatively stable. Laramidia still had the Rocky Mountains piling up, constantly slightly changing the available biomes, or causing minor regional extinctions through volcanic eruptions or changes in rain/winds/rivers, which gave it a constantly shifting set of niches the animals there had to compete for. But over on Appalachia the biggest change was the initial increase in rain thanks to the Western Interior Seaway, and the slow erosion of its larger mountains - which didn't really change up the selection pressures, so existing species were largely working fine as they were.
8:50 love that ending quote!!! great tie-in!
I could watch hours of this. More content is always appreciated.
I can't even express how excited I am to watch this video as a 30-year-old who went to a dino museum for their birthday!
Weathering a storm in the Philippines. Thanks for the entertainment in the meantime. 😊
New Mexico Represent!!🌶 A T-rex walking down Central in the ART lane?? RUN!!🚌
😂😂😂😂😂😂
And veering onto the campus, tripping into the Kiva!
I loved that you showed the continental positions at their appropriate times. Everything makes so much more sense in that context 😁
Seems like Appalachia has always been a place to preserve ancient weird culture and creatures.
I met a grad student at KAS that was studying the one Cretaceous outcrop in Kentucky, they hadn’t found anything yet but…. One day
I know that at least here in Nova Scotia, late Jurassic and Cretaceous sediments are mostly just offshore on the Grand Banks, and are thus underwater. Probably similar elsewhere on the East Coast as well.
I think Blake is my favorite host. Very cool video!
So it's kinda like not seeing your old school buddies for a long time, and then when you finally see them again, they look pretty much exactly like you left them. Meanwhile, you've turned into a big T-rex...
i love the land acknowledgment at the end! thanks for including that.
🙄
Another idea of why we don’t find many dinosaurs from the east coast involved with the ice age glaciers
That would be included in the erosion example but I tend to think this too yeah
But they have found fossils in Europe in places where there were glaciers and even Antarctica.
The glaciers only went so far south, about as far south as northern Pennsylvania
@ecurewitz where glaciers end there're a lot of floodplains, lakes, and rivers afterwards carrying a lot of melted ice. As for glaciers, some reached the southern part of Indiana, which is further south than Pennsylvania. Due to topography, glaciers were not able to cover some areas of the continent.
@@brandoncruise6398 there are still large parts of the Appalachia land mass that weren’t glaciated
Maybe the real east coast dinosaurs were the friends we made a long the way 🦖🦕
Nico Robin being an Eontologist is proof the one piece is real
1:28 Newark Supergroup sounds like a short-lived band with Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen
Well, this is about dinosaurs!
Throw Jon Bon Jovi in there
it's also the answer to the question "where are all the east coast dinosaurs"
And Pat Benatar.
All the dinosaurs I’ve seen on the east coast were down in Florida for the winter 😄
Ah yes the "snow-raptors" we could call them? Lol or something more fitting. I'm sure there's a better way to word it but you get the point 😂
This is so valid.
Not entirely - They actually responded to the call "go west, young dinosaur, go west!
@@goosenotmaverick1156 phylogenetically speaking, all snowbirds should be snowdinosaurs
"The small bodied, 6 meter long ankisaurus."
Dinosaurs are so damn cool.
YES! NEW EONS VIDEO!!! 🎉🎉🎉
I’m a fossil hunter here on the east coast and I found a Tyrannosaurid tooth here. We also have a spot we find hadrosaur teeth.
Thanks!
Perfect timing while I’m brewing my coffee!
Nico Robin!!!! Let’s go straw hats !!! Love it !
Bro what 💀
Thanks for all the hard work on these videos!
When I was younger I got to go on a fossil dig the guy who discovered Coelophysis, been my favorite little dinosaur since then!
New Mexico represent!!!!!!!!! 🦖💛❤️
NOICE!! Mi lindo Nuevo Mexico! 🌶
I love this channel! School is so fun when watching it! ❤
I was wondering, could you make a video about what the world would be like today if humans never existed? I’ve wondered about this for a while, but I’ve never found an answer to my question.
🎵Laramidia, Dinosaur Big City🎵
There are really cool massive dinosaur footprints along the Connecticut River!
Small note: by the start of the Maastrictian, the Western Interior Seaway was mostly gone, meaning that T.rex and its contemporaries would have been walking along the Atlantic coast.
0:38 That bone sticking out the front is super sus.
that dinosaur was hard
No it’s not, that’s the dinosaur’s pelvis
They have a video explaining how that bone, which you also have, is diagnostic for the two branches of dinosaurs, bird-hipped and lizard-hipped.
I thought the same thing😂
Crazy that the Appalachian mountains were around back then! I knew they were old, but not that old! Wonder how tall they were back then
YES! Finally, ankylosaurs getting some of the love and respect they deserve! 😁 Blake is now my favourite Eons host. 😉
3:36 - This part really got me thinking... 🤯 Love how you make these complex ideas so easy to understand!
The music shift when discussing how time and evolution forgot them is heartbre0aking..
10:19 Nico Robin? I suspect someone is pulling their leg.
i was just googling this topic yesterday
🤣I was about to turn off the video when I heard the familiar “downy oshin” Bawlmer accent. I had even more fun when I heard you say you were from Pittsburgh (Picksberg as yinz say). Yep, I’m a western pa transplant to Maryland (Merlin) too. Left the home of chip chopped ham and pierogis for the home of the crab feast. But I’m so glad to hear about the cool dinosaurs from this area.
This was awesome. I propose you tackle why there are apparently no dinosaurs in areas like Indiana, but are rich in marine fossils from some 300mya. Thx!
During the few times where glaciers completely covered Indiana, the top layers of rock were removed and crushed. As glaciers receded, they left behind massive floodplains, rivers, lakes, and creeks that continued to remove sediment. Take a look at glaciers in Alaska or Greenland that stop on land. At the bottom of the glacier, you always see giant floodplains and streams. In some cases raging rivers.
My thoughts went automatically to imagining the east coast as a counterpart to early Cretaceous North Africa, but with species decedent from animals from the NA late Jurassic period.
I assumed the geology was the reason so few dinosaurs are known from the east. I’ve been collecting fossils since I was kid and living in the Mississippi basin, everything I find consist of bivalves, crinoids and the like. Either the Jurassic layer is eroded away or hasn’t been uplifted to the surface.
Recently in the Eutaw formation of Mississippi, paleontologists found foot bones belonging to ornithomimosaurs the size of deinocheirus
I HAVE A QUESTION @@alioramus1637
Question @@alioramus1637
So cool that I get to still learn new stuff even if I majored (and continued to be interested) in Geology. Thank you Eons!
You know, until I saw this video, I wasn't really aware that the East Coast of North America had a big unconformity during the Mesozoic Era. If anything, , I think I just assumed fossils had been found there but had been overshadowed by all the big stuff coming out of the Western part of the continent. You hear so much about places like the Morrison Formation and so on that, unless it's highlighted with videos like this one, such absences simply slip under the radar, as it were. Then, when your notice is drawn to them it comes as a major surprise!
During the last stage of the Cretaceous, the Maastrichtian, the Western Interior Seaway finally closed again, allowing a migration of species. This final closure was from about 69-70 my ago, onward.
And indeed, the are fragmentary remains indicating a migration of western taxa to the east, i.e. from Laramidia into Appalachia.
New Mexico represent ✊
Eee, ALL sick, na?
I think the most interesting modern refugium is Sardinia. The last of the original European farmers live there.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate all your work.
The East Coast has a distinct lack of volcanos. Wonder if that's also why there hasn't been much dino bone perseveration
NC has volcanoes, but they're worn down to the roots.
Morrow Mountain is interesting because it was, essentially, an industrial site for making stone tools.
Great history telling. Wish I had the brain at school to understand what I was being taught. 45 yrs later and now I understand better 👍
A dinosaur themed night at the museum type event would be pretty cool
I remember looking at Dinosaur footprints in Holyoke Mass in shales beside the Connecticut River!
2 hours ago is crazy, I’m obsessed with this channel;
Wait... people walking into museums assume that what they see inside was found nearby? Really?
I live near a footprint site in Holyoke MA. I visit and high-five the prints regularly. Especially the ones that look like they could be from Dilophosaurus
Sweet, new dino stuff
Growing up in Pennsylvania I was told the valleys around the state were made by the same glaciers that made the great lakes. I always assumed they were responsible for some of the lack of fossils having moved mass amounts of earth and washed away what was left when they receded.
"East coast has weird dinosaurs"
meanwhile west coast: has a dinosaur with 3 horns, quills on the back and a shield on top of the head... and a cockatoo-like beak...
Aw! We heard about Blake’s favorite dinosaur.
Of course Nico Robin would be a supporter of a serious archeology oriented channel.
(My apologies if this was a case of real and fictional names overlapping, but I just felt it had to be said.)
Nico Robin being an Eontologist is wild
I LOVE that at the end you acknowledge that many time fossils were on indigenous lands and were “discovered” wrongly. And that you give credit to those Peoples
I really think that you should make a video about how plants continents and animals will evolve in the future.
We learn a lot about the past in your videos, it can help to predict the future for sure !
Love your work btw ♥️
They have a video on the projected future positions of the continents already.
Thank you for making this! I really hope we find out more about Appalachia in the future, it's too interesting to not want to learn more about.
EDIT: Also, Anchisaurus from my understanding was only 2 meters long at most, not 6 meters like you said at 2:05.
Is it possible that the geology of the east coast and west coast were similar to today? The east coast being generally more forested while the west having more open plains. Would it make sense that the evolution into larger dinosaurs was impacted by more open space while smaller versions could navigate more densely forested regions?
As a person from Eastern Tennessee this is really cool. Cause I always wondered why we don't find many dino fossils here.
It makes me so mad that there is absolutely no fossil records from dinosaurs in Quebec! We have one the oldest bacterias, but all dinosaurs are gone!
I am so happy that Appalachian dinosaurs are getting attention; even wrote a book about them to try and get more people into the subject.
Terrific episode!
It’s crazy to think how much has simply been lost to time and there’s nothing we can do about it. Even in the places we have tons of dinosaur fossils, there’s probably tons more that never fossilized.
At the same time, imagine all the wonderful animals that existed. All the weird dinosaurs, mammals, pterosaurs, anything. There could’ve been ecosystems just as insane as the Morrison or Hell Creek that we’ll never know about.
Thanks for the NM shout out.
New Mexico represent!!!!!
I love this channel!
@3:00 there is geological evidence that eastern & western north-america where separated at one point by a body of water.
During what period, can't remember. But YT as great vids on it.
The Western Interior Seaway existed from the early Late Cretaceous (100 Ma) to the earliest Paleocene (66 Ma), and it is mentioned & shown in this video, and others by PBS Eons.
Woo!! New Mexico represent my dude!