Diversity and structure of Late Cretaceous–Paleogene crocodyliform communities in southern Saskatchewan, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Crocodyliform fossils of extinct relatives and members of modern families are common finds in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, spanning a largely continuous interval of the Upper Cretaceous and Paleogene. Although this location represents the northernmost known extent of many well-known taxa, only a few individuals are documented in the literature, demonstrating the importance of Saskatchewan to the study of early crown-group crocodylians from the area. This study approaches these fossil crocodyliforms from multiple angles; describing previously unpublished specimens, examining the stratigraphy and taphonomy of the most notable quarries, and identifying patterns of the microvertebrate sites of the latest Maastrichtian Frenchman Formation in a case study to learn about the composition, ecology, and taphonomic overprints of this crocodyliform community. Almost all crocodyliforms known from Alberta and the northern United States over the span of the Campanian to late Eocene are confirmed to be (or are likely) present in Saskatchewan, including multiple species of Borealosuchus, and various alligatoroid genera. Borealosuchus is the most common and longest-lived crocodyliform represented, persisting in Saskatchewan from about 66.3 to 59 million years ago. This genus is preserved in a variety of freshwater habitats over this time interval, demonstrating resilience and flexibility in the face of ecosystem changes that occurred across the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary and well into the Paleocene. Most Frenchman Formation microsites show an elevated number of osteoderms and teeth compared to fragments of skeletal material. This likely represents a preservation bias due to each individual animal having hundreds of osteoderms and teeth. Additionally, the smaller teeth are the most common, likely representing an abundance of small and/or young individuals shedding teeth at a greater rate. This resembles the population structure in other extinct and modern crocodyliform communities, suggesting similar life histories.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".