Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Fish and Reptiles of the ReBecca’s Hollow Site, Williams Fork Formation, Late Cretaceous (Edmontonian), Colorado & ‘Between the Dinosaurs’ Toes’: Approaches to Exhibiting Microvertebrate Fossils in Museum Displays (With Emphasis on the Cretaceous Period)

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https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/wp988m81m
Abstract
  • The ReBecca’s Hollow locality of the Late Cretaceous Williams Fork Formation (northwestern Colorado) yields a diverse, actinopterygian-dominated, vertebrate fauna from a freshwater environment. This assemblage is temporally correlative with the Horseshoe Canyon and St. Mary River Formations in Alberta but has many faunal similarities to Lancian localities from MT, WY, and the Dakotas. The discrepancy in fauna between the WFF and its Canadian contemporaries supports the hypothesis, proposed by others, for discrete faunal/climate zones between northern and central Laramidia across the Campanian-Maastrichtian boundary. The microvertebrate fossils from this locality provide important paleoeological data but, like other small fossils, are difficult to display and interpret in a museum setting. I propose a display method based on notions of worldbuilding and contextual learning that visually explain these specimens to museum audiences.

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  • 2025-04-15
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  • 2025-07-24
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