Abstract
Previous attempts to determine palaeoenvironmental preferences in dinosaurs have generally been qualitative assessments based upon data from restricted geographical areas. Here, we use a global database of Cretaceous herbivorous dinosaurs to identify significant associations between clades and broad palaeoenvironmental categories (‘terrestrial’, ‘coastal’, ‘marine’). Nodosaurid ankylosaurs and hadrosaurids show significant positive associations with marine sediments, while marginocephalians (Ceratopsia, Pachycephalosauria), saurischians (herbivorous theropods, Sauropoda) and ankylosaurid ankylosaurs are significantly positively associated with terrestrial sediments. These results provide quantitative support for the hypothesis that some clades (Nodosauridae, Hadrosauridae) were more abundant in coastal and/or fluvial environments, while others (e.g. Marginocephalia, Ankylosauridae) preferentially inhabited more distal environments.
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Acknowledgment
This research was funded by the award of a NERC Standard Grant (NE/C002865/1) to P.M.B, Paul Kenrick and Malcolm Penn (NHM). Thanks to Alistair McGowan for discussion and to Oliver Rauhut and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments which improved the final version.
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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00114-008-0429-1
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Butler, R.J., Barrett, P.M. Palaeoenvironmental controls on the distribution of Cretaceous herbivorous dinosaurs. Naturwissenschaften 95, 1027–1032 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-008-0417-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-008-0417-5