Abstract
Dinosaur migration patterns are very difficult to determine, often relying solely on the geographical distribution of fossils. Unfortunately, it is generally not possible to determine if a fossil taxon's geographical distribution is the result of migration or simply a wide distribution. Whereas some attempts have been made to use isotopic systems to determine migratory patterns in dinosaurs, these methods have yet to achieve wider usage in the study of dinosaur ecology. Here, we have used strontium isotope ratios from fossil enamel to reconstruct the movements of an individual hadrosaur from Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. Results from this study are consistent with a range or migratory pattern between Dinosaur Provincial Park and a contemporaneous locality in the South Saskatchewan River area, Alberta, Canada. This represents a minimum distance of approximately 80 km, which is consistent with migrations seen in modern elephants. These results suggest the continent-wide distribution of some hadrosaur species in the Late Cretaceous of North America is not the result of extremely long-range migratory behaviours.
Highlights
Since it was first suggested by von Huene [1], the idea of dinosaur migration has been the subject of much debate
It was important to minimize the effects of possible changes in the environmental strontium isotope content that can occur over geological time, so fossil localities were chosen for their approximate time equivalency
The total distance between the Dinosaur Provincial Park and South Saskatchewan River localities is approximately 80 km, a distance that is relatively comparable to migrations covered by modern elephants in Africa [28] or the home ranges of elephants in Borneo [29], which are among the best modern analogues for hadrosaurs on the basis of similarities in mass and presumed diet
Summary
Since it was first suggested by von Huene [1], the idea of dinosaur migration has been the subject of much debate. We applied a strontium isotope approach to investigate migratory behaviours in hadrosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada.
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