The Djadochta Formation | Dinosaur Documentary

The Djadochta Formation is located in what is now Mongolia's portion of the Gobi Desert. The fossils uncovered from the region date back to between seventy five and seventy one million years ago, towards the final sections of the Cretaceous - specifically in a time known as the Campanian.

It formed a colossal, expansive desert, similar to the Gobi found in the area today, in the Nemegt Basin. Not far away, bizarre, gigantic theropods such as Deinocheirus and Gigantoraptor have been discovered, but the Djadochta Formation was known primarily for its smaller dinosaurs.

Some of these were truly iconic, and the Djadochta has provided us with some of the most important, informative and fascinating fossils to be discovered in all of prehistory to date. This was a world of vast, blistering sands, where it was likely warm in the day and cold in the night time. The dinosaurs found here were often gracile, slender, feathered animals, or comparatively tiny ornithischians. Water and vegetation were valuable and rare in this harsh landscape - occasional streams would have been present to provide relief from the dry dunes between the intermittent oases, where patches of shrubs and conifers grew.

These would have provided a key food source for the animals living here, depended upon by the entire ecosystem. The Djadochta is comprised mainly of sands, standstones and clays, and has proven an extremely fruitful and abundant location to dig up dinosaur fossils. In this video, we will take you through the creatures that lived there, step by step. Starting with the Ornithischians, taking a look at the abundant and iconic array of theropods, before delving deep into the list of other prehistoric creatures that lived here - birds, reptiles, mammals and fish, in the main. Since the Djadochta Formation has proven to be so abundant in terms of its fossils, there is not enough time in this video to explain every genus unconvered from the region in detail, so we will be talking today about the most significant finds the formation has had to offer. We'll explore bizarre frilled ornithischians, agile, slender theropods, and some prehistoric ancestors to a few of today's modern animals.

0:00 Introduction
3:24 The Ornithischians
9:51 The Theropods
23:39 Other Creatures of Djadochta
37:33 Outro

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Writing & Research by: Thomas McGlynn

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