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Eggs and eggshell are generally rare in the Upper Cretaceous rocks of Alberta, despite being relatively abundant nearby in Montana. Palaeontologists and other people have been prospecting the Horseshoe Canyon Formation for more than a 130 years, but eggshell fragments have only just been recovered. The fragments are unornamented with angusticanaliculate pores and three structural layers. Numerous features support their referral to Prismatoolithus levis, and they confirm the presence of a bird-like external layer in this ootaxon. The fragments, which likely belonged to Albertavenator curriei, are from a site with abundant troodontid teeth and perinate material from hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, and theropods. The discovery of eggshell challenges the notion that the Horseshoe Canyon Formation is too heavily sideritized to preserve eggshell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In connection with the excavation of the Danek Bonebed in 2011, a half-metre long, well preserved right ceratopsian orbital horncore was recovered. The horncore belongs to the taphonomic group of larger, heavier elements from the bonebed. So far, no other ceratopsian elements have been identified from the bonebed. Ceratopsids from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of southern Alberta include Anchiceratops, Arrhinoceratops, Eotriceratops, and Pachyrhinosaurus. The size, proportions, and gently anterolaterally procurving morphology of the horncore indicates that it is from a chasmosaurine ceratopsid. There is weak morphological information to suggest that it may represent Anchiceratops ornatus, which is the most common chasmosaurine at this stratigraphic level. The base of the specimen has been hollowed out by a sinus system, which in conjunction with its large size indicates it is probably from a mature animal. The rarity of ceratopsian remains in this and other hadrosaur bonebeds suggests horned dinosaurs were excluded from anywhere that was occupied by herds of large numbers of Edmontosaurus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Danek Bonebed (Horsethief Member, Horseshoe Canyon Formation, Late Campanian) is dominated by the remains of at least 12 Edmontosaurus regalis. Skeletal remains of a tyrannosaurid and ceratopsid are also known. The predominantly disarticulated remains were interred on a periodically inundated floodplain and, although the cause of death is unknown, a sudden, catastrophic death explains the demographic spread, faunal diversity, rare greenstick fractures, and homogeneous weathering/abrasion categories of the assemblage. The Danek Bonebed shares a similar taphonomic signature to the Liscomb Bonebed (Prince Creek Formation, Alaska), but it is unique among all other described hadrosaurid bonebeds in the unusually high proportion of bite-marked bones (∼30%), suggesting scavenging played a major role in the reworking of the assemblage. The highest frequency of bite marks is found on small, often unidentifiable (and commonly ignored) bone fragments, underscoring the role that such fragments can play in taphonomic interpretation. Finally, the recognition of E. regalis from central Alberta is an important datum linking contemporaneous occurrences in southern Alberta with slightly older records of this species from the Wapiti Formation in northwestern Alberta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Anchiceratops is a chasmosaurine ceratopsid from the Upper Cretaceous Horseshoe Canyon Formation (HCF) of Alberta. It is distinguished primarily by its unique parietosquamosal frill ornamentation and possibly by the presence of a ventrally flexed olfactory bulb of the brain. Although Anchiceratops is known from at least ten partial skulls, only two of these have been formally described. These skulls are not stratigraphically segregated, but they differ markedly in their proportions (e.g., supraorbital horncore and frill dimensions), causing previous authors to account for this disparity with reference to either interspecific or sexual differences. Both of these hypotheses assume that variation in Anchiceratops is dimorphic; however, this assumption has never been tested with reference to all available material. The present study describes all material from the HCF that can be positively attributed to Anchiceratops, and tests the assumption of dimorphism by subjecting this material to a series of morphometric analyses. We find no compelling evidence for dimorphism in Anchiceratops, although sample size is still too small for convincing statistical support. We conclude that there is a single, variable species of Anchiceratops, A. ornatus. Average sedimentation rates for the HCF suggest that A. ornatus is a particularly long-lived species compared with other ceratopsids (∼1.5-2.0 Ma), and the paleoecological implications of this are discussed. A cladistic analysis that includes the new data presented here indicates that Anchiceratops is more closely related to Chasmosaurus than to Triceratops, in contrast with previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A skeleton of a new ceratopsid dinosaur, Eotriceratops xerinsularis gen. et sp. nov., is described in this paper. It is the first associated vertebrate skeleton found within the upper 20 m of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation. Eotriceratops xerinsularis is a large chasmosaurine that differs from other chasmosaurines in a unique set of features in the premaxilla, nasal horn core, squamosal frill, and epijugal. The most striking of those features includes an extremely tall, non-recessed narial process of the premaxilla; the presence of greatly elongate, spindle-shaped epoccipitals on the squamosal frill; a deep, well-demarcated fossa on the anteroventral surface of the squamosal frill; a sharply conical epijugal with a pronounced proximoposterior process and separate fossa-like facets for the jugal and quadratojugal; and the presence of an obliquely extending vascular trace meeting a transverse vascular trace ventrally on the anterior surface of the nasal horn core. Our phylogenetic analysis suggests that E. xerinsularis is nested within a clade including Triceratops, Diceratops, and Torosaurus, which are all from late Maastrichtian deposits. The upper 20 m of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation comprises a coal-rich interval (Carbon–Thompson coal zone, unit 5), which previously has been assigned to upper Maastrichtian magnetochrons 31n and 30r, and the Mancicorpus gibbus miospore subzone. The ceratopsid specimen was collected from between the Carbon and Thompson coal seams, and thus, is inferred to (1) occur near the top of magnetochron 31n and (2) have an age of 67.6–68.0 Ma. Large chasmosaurine ceratopsids, such as Triceratops and Torosaurus, have not previously been described from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation or from magnetochron 31n or the M. gibbus miospore subzone. Thus, Eotriceratops is distinctly older than any other ceratopsid in the Triceratops group, and the discovery of E. xerinsularis helps fill a biostratigraphic gap between early and late Maastrichtian chasmosaurines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]