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Judithian


The Judithian was a North American faunal stage lasting from 83.5 to 70.6 million years ago. It overlaps with the Campanian global stage.

Dinosaur faunas of the Judithian age may represent the peak of dinosaur evolution in North America.Hadrosaurs were universally the dominant herbivore of the period and comprised more than half of "a typical assemblage." This was also the period of greatest generic diversity among large herbivorous dinosaurs. Just in Montana and Southern Alberta were ten genera of ceratopsians and ten genera of hadrosaurs.

Thomas M. Lehman has observed that Corythosaurus and Centrosaurus haven't been discovered outside of southern Alberta even though they are the most abundant Judithian dinosaurs in the region. Large herbivores like the ceratopsians and hadrosaurs living in North America during the Late Cretaceous had "remarkably small geographic ranges" despite their large body size and high mobility. This restricted distribution strongly contrasts with modern mammalian faunas whose large herbivores' ranges "typical[ly] ... span much of a continent." Another example is Pentaceratops, the only known Judithian ceratopsian from New Mexico. Only the rarer species among modern mammal communities would be able to distinguish different latitudinal zones, and some of these taxa are likely too rare to fossilize. This lack of provinciality exists despite the strong temperature gradient. Restrictions in herbivorous dinosaur distribution may be due to foliage preferences, narrow tolerance for variation in climate or other environmental factors. The restrictions on herbivorous dinosaur distribution must have been due to ecological factors rather than physical barriers because carnivorous dinosaurs tended to have wider distributions, especially smaller forms.


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