A COMPARISON OF NON-AVIAN THEROPOD AND BASAL AVIALAN LOCALITIES IN CHINA, GERMANY, AND ALBERTA WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR FEATHER PRESERVATION

The discovery of feathers in non-avian dinosaurs has radically changed the way paleontologists view these animals in terms of their life appearance, ecology, and behavior. The Liaoning providence in China has been a leading locality for coelurosaurian theropods with the presence of feathers or feather-like filaments, from a bat-winged scansoriopterygid (Xing et. al. 2015), to a large basal tyrannosauroid (Xing et. al. 2012). Recently, a few specimens of the ornithomimid genus Ornithomimus have been described from the Dinosaur Park and Horseshoe Canyon formations as to having feather impressions preserved (Zelenitsky et. al. 2012, Van Der Reest et. al. 2016). With the further potential for more feathered theropods to be discovered in North America, we have conducted a preliminary analysis that compares the Dinosaur Park Formation and the Horseshoe Canyon Formation to the Tiaojishan, and Yixian formations of Liaoning, as well as the famous Solnhofen beds of Germany via searching through museum databases, and published literature. Our analysis includes a wide of range of formations ranging from the Bathonian stage of the Mid-Jurassic to the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous, which would allow a great range of comparisons concerning paleoclimate, sediment composition, and depositional environments. Individual specimens of various taxa were used to determine biostratigraphic placements in each formation, as well as to observe any changes in preservation across different size ranges of a variety of skeletal element conditions.