A large find was announced about a month ago; James I. Kirkland (of the College of Eastern Utah's Prehistoric Museum) discovered about 10,000 fossilized Ankylosaur bones near Price, Utah. These bones (both Nodosaurids and Ankylosaurids) date from about 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, toward the end of the Mesozoic Era.

Ankylosaurs were heavily armored quadrupedal plant-eating dinosaurs that lived . These tank-like ornithischian dinosaurs came in two varieties:

• Nodosaurids - had spikes running along the sides of their bodies, pear-shaped heads, a toothless horny beak, leaf-shaped teeth in the cheeks, and lacked a clubbed-tail. They lived from the mid-Jurassic period through the Cretaceous period.
• Ankylosaurids - had a tail club, a wide skull, and massive legs. They lived during the Cretaceous period.

The Cretaceous Map
Kirkland's find may change the mid-Cretaceous map. Some of his new finds resemble some Chinese dinosaurs, perhaps indicating that a land bridge connected China and North America during this time (the currently-accepted map had this land bridge appearing millions of years later). Kenneth Carpenter (of the Denver Museum of Natural History), who is studying these new fossils, thinks that the resemblance to Chinese ankylosaurs is only superficial, so the new finds would not alter the mid-Cretaceous map.

The supercontinent Pangaea, about 250 milllion years ago	The Earth 130 milllion years ago
The Earth 190 milllion years ago	The Earth 65 milllion years ago, at the end of the Mesozoic Era.
The continents of the Earth looked very different during the time of the dinosaurs. The continents were jammed together at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era, forming the supercontinent of Pangaea, but it started breaking apart toward the middle of the Mesozoic Era (during the Jurassic period). The

RELATED LINKS
A page on Ankylosaurs.

All about the Cretaceous period.

Other fossils found in Utah (and the rest of North America).

Other fossils found in China (and the rest of Asia).

Chart of geological time.

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