 | At the Top of the Grand Staircase: The Late Cretaceous of Southern Utah The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah is the location of one of the best-known terrestrial records for the late Cretaceous. A major effort in the new century has documented over 2,000 new vertebrate fossil sites, provided new radiometric dates, and identified five new genera of ceratopsids, two new species of hadrosaur, a probable new genus of hypsilophodontid, new pachycephalosaurs and ankylosaurs, several kinds of theropods (including a new genus of oviraptor and a new tyrannosaur), plus the most complete specimen of a Late Cretaceous therizinosaur ever collected from North America, and much more. At the Top of the Grand Staircase: The Late Cretaceous of Southern Utah documents this major stepping stone toward a synthesis of the ecology and evolution of the Late Cretaceous ecosystems of western North America. Alan L. Titus is Monument Paleontologist at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah and Adjunct Curator, Natural History Museum of Utah. Mark A. Loewen is Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah and Research Associate, Natural History Museum of Utah. |
