#jp30

Jiří never liked rain, let alone storms. They flooded where he livedand being soaked always made him feel sick. It's not that he minded the water, it was just being wet was the issue,

"Are you okay?" Linus was next to him, umbrella mostly being used to keep his own supplies dry rather than the two of them,

"Wet." His legs felt sluggish, like he couldn't really move. They were supposed to set up camp, but the area they chose had nearly sunk everything once the rain picked up,

"Not a rain fan?" Loud thunder echos through the forest and Jiří can see Young flinch slightly. Linus seems to be keeping his eyes on him though,

"No. I'm better when it's dry." There's no actual reason to be so curt with Karly, Jiří knows that, but he's already misrerable and feels like he could extinguish at any moment. Even if he can't really,

"You could have told us that," The umbrella moves to cover Jiří more, rain beating down on the fabric loudly, "Take this until we reach the next town."

"Your books—"

Li'l Jurassic Park

The Schrader Formation is a fictional formation inspired by the Jurassic World Prologue sequence, set across a large expanse of Southern USA and Mexico. The speculative formation attempts to gather together what the Prologue presented to create a comprehensive speculative ecosystem, grounded within some reality.

Paleogeography-climatology

The Schrader Formation rests alongside the Pacific coastal regions of North America, extending far inland to mountainous, highlandic regions. A major river system and very narrow bays shape the land of the Schrader Formation, both leading directly to the sea. These wetter regions lead to more lush and occasionally, swampy lands.

The overall climate of the region is characterized by a dry-wet season cycle, resulting in dry weather and more humid weather throughout the year. Dry weather in open landscapes yields a very savanna-like appearance, whilst the wet season offers large lush fern plains.

Biotic Interchange

The southern U.S and Mexico regions were major hotspots for a real-world biotic interchange during the Maastrichtian, allowing for groups, like Titanosaurs, to cross into North America, and some other groups, potentially ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, and thyreophorans, crossing into South America. These instances of interchanges happened across the Cretaceous on rare occasions including during the Maastrichtian as well. This ultimately led to the south being populated with a mixture of two different ecologies. Real world examples of the Ojo Alamo formation, North Horn formation, etc, showcase the interchanges with Alamosaurus.

Represented Species

The represented species in the chart correlates to some species shown within the Prologue. Species such as Tyrannosaurus rex, Alamosaurus, Glyptodontopelta, Ankylosaurus, Ojoraptorsaurus, Quetzalcoatlus, and both pteranodontids were directly present themselves in the southern U.S and Mexico. The Nasutoceratopsinid, Iguanodontid, Giganotosaurus, Dawndraco-like pterosaur, Moros, and the Mongolian-inspired Oviraptorid were sourced from other locations.

Nasutoceratopsid

The depicted Nasutoceratopsid is a large, Nasutoceratops-derived species. The size and exaggerated combat features arose from the presence of Tyrannosaurus, pushing for defensive features as it did for Triceratops. While Nasutoceratops itself did not live to the end-Cretaceous, many relatives have, and speculatively, so did this species.

Nasutoceratopsids would make up a large portion of the biota mass, their high population and frequency would make them a particularly numerous species across the formation. Large migratory herds can be seen traversing between the landscape seasonally as various locations differ from eachother in response to seasonal changes.

Smaller species of Nasutoceratopsids exist to represent their ancestors more closely, though they exist in much less large predator-dominated environments, namely in mountains or on islands. Their predators in return can include species like "Moros".

Oviraptorids

Two prominent genera of oviraptorosaurs exist across the Schrader Formation, Ojoraptorsaurus and an indeterminate oviraptorosaur. Oviraptorosaur indet. The identification of what oviraptorid group it belongs to is uncertain, although it being of late-surviving Mongolian descent is a possibility, given the eggs found in the region.

Iguanodontid

Iguanodontids are seen across Laurasia, species such as Iguanocollosus, Tenotosaurus, Hippodraco, etc are seen in North America. Here, a convergently Mantellisaurus-like species of Iguanodont derived from earlier ancestors present more up North and in Europe. Itself achieves a generally larger size than its ancestorial species, namely in defense against the larger predators due to them being more solitary.

Smaller-sized populations too like the Nasutoceratopsids exist in less Tyrannosaur-dominated regions of the formation, though they are not taxonomically distinct.

Ornithocheirid

While Ornithocheirae was thought to died out in the middle-late Cretaceous, a very slight possibility of them persisting to the Maastrichtian was always theorized. The known material found within the Schrader Formation indicate a very sparse population comprised of late-surviving, derived Ornithocheirids, being the last of the toothed pterosaurs.

While being traditionally associated with Gondwanian (South America, Australia, occasionally Europe, Africa) regions, their widespread distribution as a family allowed species to exist within North America. This specific species was able to take refuge and ecologically diverse from the rest of the Maastrichtian pterosaurs. Being found in more mountainous and both inland and coastal cliffsides. Although, some material indicates major overlap with the other pterosaur species of the ecology.

Isotopic analyses indicates a heavier diet of brackish and alkaline water fishes, often much larger fish species, as opposed to the carrion/small vertabrae-heavy diet of Quetzalcoatlus and saltwater and freshwatever heavy fish diet of both Pteranodontids.

Giganotosaurus

The nonspecific Giganotosaurus is derived from a population of Northward-increasing Giganotosaurids from South America. These species would eventually reach North America across the land bridge. Its diet of namely sauropods and hadrosaurs though would yield less competition than Tyrannosaurus. While Tyrannosaurus can take down large sauropods, it would instead target much smaller individuals due to its diet consisting of mainly armored animals.

Giganotosaurus though, would be better adapted to take down these larger sauropods, allowing for some niche differentiation from the start. Territorial disputes would exist regardless between both species, though they were not due to overlapping diets and ecological competition.

Authors note - A Giganotosaurus-lineage species of Carcharodontosaurid is the least likely thing to exist in this speculative evolution, but other lines of Carcharodontosaurids surviving (such as Labocania being a Carcharodontosaur) would've been more likely. For fun, lets run with Giganotosaurus.

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Unrepresented Species

Many species were considered (and will eventually come) for the chart in the effort to help represent more southern North America species and some South American species and to flesh out the ecosystem.

Ojoceratops, Coahuilaceratops, Troodontids, Lambeosaurines, Orninthomimids, primitive Deinocheirids, Thescelosaurids, Unenlagians, Microraptorid (when Moros was intended to be a Microraptor), Tropeognathid, and many more were considered to be drawn. Eventually, they will be represented and this blog will be updated.

Standins / Representation

Glyptodontopelta is a standin for the unknown carcass the Quetzalcoatlus was feeding off. While absolutely nothing points it to the idea of being anything specific, Glyptodontopelta was chosen for nearby locality, added diversity, and obscure-species representation.

The Dawndraco-inspired smaller Pteranodontid is representative of the idea that two differently sized Pteranodon species were shown in the prologue, that being the large flock amongst the Quetzalcoatlus and the riverside. While it is either dubious CGI scaling, skewed perception of size, and camera angles, it was chosen regardless for added pterosaur diversity.

While Tlatolophus was considered regardless of the cut concepts, the Dominion prologue originally had Parasaurolophus possibly involved in art. We never see this obviously, although with the nearby Tlatolophus being near geologically, it would be fair to represent it quicker.

Microraptoridae indet. and Ornithocheirae indet. are both based off concepts for the short, where Microraptor was meant to replace Moros, and Ornithocheirus meant to replace Quetzalcoatlus.

Hope you enjoy this read! I will certainly expand upon it further.

HAPPY 30TH ANNIVERSARY JURASSIC PARK!