#beringia

Saurolophus alaskensis under a midnight sun.

The biogeographic distribution of the saurolophini tribe implies some interesting dispersal events. Kundurosaurus and Kerberosaurus are known from very fragmentary remains so they don't map well in phylogenetic studies, but they consistently cluster as either the basalmost members of the edmotosaurini, saurolophini, or as sister taxa to them. This points to an Asian origin for the groups, and therefore there had to be at least one dispersal event into North America via Beringia. Once in North America there was a radiation of saurolophin taxa with Prosaurolophus maximus known from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, Augustynolophus morrisi from the Moreno Formation in California, and unnamed fragmentary specimens that are probably saurolophins from the Almond Formation in Wyoming and Javelina Formation in Texas. Then there are the two species of Saurolophus proper, S. osborni from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation in Alberta and S. angustirostris from the Nemegt Formation in Mongolia. This pattern shows that after migrating into North America there was an endemic radiation of new species, and then a second dispersal event back into Asia. There are no known remains of it, but there must have been a member of the Saurolophus genus in Beringia during the Maastrichtian stage, whether that be a known or new species.

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Atlantis

Kumari Kandam

Lemuria

Mu

Sunken landmasses that actually existed:

Balkanatolia

Beringia

Doggerland

Ferdinandia

Greater Adria

Kerguelen Plateau

Maui Nui

Sahul

Sundaica

A new study has revealed the oldest link yet between Native Americans and their ancestors in East Asia: a 14,000-year-old tooth belonging to a close cousin of today’s Native Americans, found thousands of kilometers from the landmass that once connected Eurasia and the Americas.

“It’s very cool,” says Jennifer Raff, a geneticist at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, who studies the peopling of the Americas. The work suggests the Siberian ancestors of North America’s Indigenous peoples were more widespread and mobile than previously believed, she says. It may also indirectly support the hypothesis that Native Americans’ ancestors became isolated from their Asian forebears on Beringia, an ancient land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska.