From the Dinosaur Collector From the Dinosaur Collector
The Early Cretaceous of North America:
can be divided into three faunal zones. First there is a Northern Boreal hadrosaurine zone. The Central Interior is an arid zone characterized by the Deinonychus Tenontosaurus fauna through the middle Cretaceous. An Acrocanthosaurus Astrodon Zone descended from the Late Jurassic fauna contained broken forests and grasslands existed along the Gulf Coast to Maryland.
update 092206
More Diorama Early Cretaceous
In the Cretaceous the sea had split Laurasia into Asiamerica (East Asia and western North America) and Euramerica (Europe and eastern North America), and the continents had reached their current positions. New seas appeared in earlier land areas and the Southern continents became great islands.Land and sea temperatures rose throughout the Cretaceous, leading in many places to a return to the hot deserts of the Triassic. Mountains formed and seasons became more marked, land animals could no longer spread everywhere, and dinosaur families became more closely linked to particular continents and places. In turn this led to much greater At the end of the Jurassic, most of these high feeders became extinct in North America, and were replaced by successive waves of beaked dinosaurs specialized for low feeding. No new high feeders evolved. This change in feeding pattern must have had an impact on plant evolution (plants and herbivores are always locked in evolutionary advance and counter-advance), and it has even been suggested that the increased pressure on low growing plants opened the way for a take-over by plants with the ability to grow rapidly and reproduce rapidly. Thus they could colonize a grazed area quickly and produce a new generation before the herbivores returned to crop the area again. One of the plant types best suited for such an environment would have been the angiosperms, or flowering plants. Today these make up most of what we recognize as plants, but in the late Jurassic were a struggling minority. Suddenly in the Cretaceous period and at the same time as the low feeding dinosaurs were taking over as the major herbivores, the angiosperms flourished.
The Toyway Walking with Dinosaurs Iguanodon with custom McDonalds Disney Animal World Iguanodon. Stephen Robertson did a great job matching the colors to the Toyway figures.
The sauropods continued to dominate in the South East coast and in Mexico. Astrodon (also known as Pleurocoelus) appears to be a medium sized brachiosaur (or possibly a titanosaur). Giants rivaling the size of the Late Jurassic predecessors like the Sauroposidon also continued to exist. Acrocanthosaurus was the large predator for this period. Almost as large as the later Tyrannosaurus but related to the Jurassic Allosaurus and African Carcharodontosaurus. It was characterized by long vertebrae that probably supported a hump. A remnant of the long bodied boom feeding diplodocids may have held out in Mexico but short bodied, long necked high browsers were now the favored body style for sauropods.
Battat Acrocanthosaurus. and theLeft is the Safari Acrocanthosaurus with a Larmie Brachiosaurus. To the right a Bullyland Brachiosaurus
.
The retired Carnegie Safari Deinonychus and a variety of Disney-Mattel iguanodons,
While no Baryonyx or other spinosaurids have been been found in North America the land connection to Europe make it feasible to they may have been present. In North America there is a disputed partial skeleton and armor assigned to a polacanthine, Hoplitosaurus and a nodosaur Sauropelta is present
Baryonyx and Sauropelta are from Schleich the Polacanthus is from Play Vision.
Iguanodons seem to have been every where
Starting to the left are two green UKRD iguanodon's and center a Toyway Iguanodon. In the Center is a gray Carnegie Safari and a Bullyland Iguanodon. To the right a Battat and Wild Safari Utahraptor with a painted Invicta Iguanodon.
Iguanodon the first species was found in 1822 and was only the second dinosaur to be named.
Custom Marx Iguanodon Photo and art work by Fred Hinjosa.
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