Taphonomy and taxonomy of a juvenile lambeosaurine (Ornithischia: Hadrosauridae) bonebed from the late Campanian Wapiti Formation of northwestern Alberta, Canada

Hadrosaurid (duck-billed) dinosaur bonebeds are exceedingly prevalent in upper Cretaceous (Campanian–Maastrichtian) strata from the Midwest of North America (especially Alberta, Canada, and Montana, U.S.A) but less frequently documented more northern regions. The Wapiti Formation northwestern Alberta is a largely untapped resource terrestrial palaeontological information missing southern due to deposition marine Bearpaw Formation. In 2018, Boreal Dinosaur Project rediscovered Spring Creek Bonebed, which had been lost since 2002, along bank River, southwest Grande Prairie. Earlier excavations observations Bonebed suggested that site yielded young hadrosaurines. Continued work 2018 2019 recovered ~300 specimens included minimum eight individuals, based on number right humeri. morphology several cranial elements unequivocally supports lambeosaurine affinities, making sample first occurrence lambeosaurines overall size range histology bones found at indicate these animals were uniformly late juveniles, suggesting age segregation was life history strategy among hadrosaurids. Given considerable attained by lambeosaurines, they probably segregated breeding population during nesting or caring for young, rather than different diet locomotory requirements. Dynamic aspects history, such as segregation, may well have contributed highly diverse cosmopolitan nature Late