Beringia: a gateway to the Americas

seen from Senegal
seen from Australia
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Russia
seen from China
seen from Italy
seen from Poland
seen from Australia

seen from Singapore

seen from Canada

seen from Singapore
seen from Vietnam

seen from Australia
Beringia: a gateway to the Americas
Spec-Dinovember Day 15: Cretaceous Unicorn, a one-horned saurolophine
Saurolophus alaskensis under a midnight sun.
The biogeographic distribution of the saurolophini tribe implies some interesting dispersal events. Kundurosaurus and Kerberosaurus are known from very fragmentary remains so they don't map well in phylogenetic studies, but they consistently cluster as either the basalmost members of the edmotosaurini, saurolophini, or as sister taxa to them. This points to an Asian origin for the groups, and therefore there had to be at least one dispersal event into North America via Beringia. Once in North America there was a radiation of saurolophin taxa with Prosaurolophus maximus known from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, Augustynolophus morrisi from the Moreno Formation in California, and unnamed fragmentary specimens that are probably saurolophins from the Almond Formation in Wyoming and Javelina Formation in Texas. Then there are the two species of Saurolophus proper, S. osborni from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation in Alberta and S. angustirostris from the Nemegt Formation in Mongolia. This pattern shows that after migrating into North America there was an endemic radiation of new species, and then a second dispersal event back into Asia. There are no known remains of it, but there must have been a member of the Saurolophus genus in Beringia during the Maastrichtian stage, whether that be a known or new species.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of all the prompts for the month, this one is the most plausible. I could have gone crazier and made a more outlandish creature (I thought about a kritosaurin with the 'horn' being a tall scale on a really high nose hump), and maybe I went the easy route and done the one that already has a 'horn'. Maybe. But the distribution of this genus in space and time tells us that there would have been some member of it way up in the arctic for at least a little bit of time, and to me that is the far more interesting speculation.
Sunken landmasses that never existed:
Atlantis
Kumari Kandam
Lemuria
Mu
Sunken landmasses that actually existed:
Balkanatolia
Beringia
Doggerland
Ferdinandia
Greater Adria
Kerguelen Plateau
Maui Nui
Sahul
Sundaica
Zealandia
Some maps showing the probable peopling of the Americas.
Beringia
Oldest cousin of Native Americans found in Russia
A new study has revealed the oldest link yet between Native Americans and their ancestors in East Asia: a 14,000-year-old tooth belonging to a close cousin of today’s Native Americans, found thousands of kilometers from the landmass that once connected Eurasia and the Americas.
“It’s very cool,” says Jennifer Raff, a geneticist at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, who studies the peopling of the Americas. The work suggests the Siberian ancestors of North America’s Indigenous peoples were more widespread and mobile than previously believed, she says. It may also indirectly support the hypothesis that Native Americans’ ancestors became isolated from their Asian forebears on Beringia, an ancient land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska.
Sometime about 20,000 years ago, people began to cross the eastern tip of Siberia onto Beringia. Exactly where they lived and roamed in Siberia before that, however, has long been a mystery. Read more.
You ever catch yourself thinking about the ancient flooded forests of Doggerland, or the grassy steppes of Beringia?
Recientemente he estado escribiendo historias sobre el estrecho de Bering y este es uno de los personajes