In 1907, Barnum Brown named the Hell Creek beds (Formation) for the strata exposed in the Hell Creek Valley and other downstream tributaries of the Missouri River. In the absence of a stratotype section, a lectostratotype is herein proposed for the Hell Creek Formation based on 84.2-m-thick exposures at Flag Butte (local name) in Ried Coulee (archaic use; East Fork of Hell Creek) and East Ried Coulee, tributaries of Hell Creek, Garfield County, Montana (sec. 29, T. 21 N., R. 38 W., NAD27 CONUS; base 47.55931°N, 106.88111°W; top 47.55533°N, 106.86810°W). The formation is underlain with general conformity by sandstone beds of the Fox Hills Formation (as characteristically known, the Colgate Member is absent) and is for the most part conformably overlain locally by the Tullock Member of the Fort Union Formation. The upper contact at Flag Butte is demarcated at the base of the IrZ lignite bed (above an iridium anomaly). The boundary has been demonstrated to be somewhat unconformable in areas to the west. The IrZ bed is also missing at Bug Creek in McCone County. In its type section, the Hell Creek Formation is subdivided (simply and informally) into Ried Coulee (lower Hell Creek), East Ried Coulee (middle Hell Creek), and Flag Butte (upper Hell Creek) units, each containing a sandstone and a mudstone lithofacies. Formational thickness varies with local depositional and erosional history of various coastal-deltaic environments across the Williston Basin and a trend of overall thinning to the east and northeast.

Many workers consider the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction the archetypal catastrophic pulse event caused solely by the Chicxulub bolide impact. However, based on a global scale analysis of marine animals, the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary is a candidate for an extinction enhanced by the coincidence of press and pulse disturbances. We make a preliminary test of key predictions of the press-pulse hypothesis using palynological data. We document a local palynological extinction of 21% at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, which is consistent with extinction rates of 15% to 30% at other localities in the Hell Creek type area and throughout North America. We also find a decline in the number of dicot angiosperm pollen taxa between −3.5 m and −2.5 m below the boundary. We document a low-palynospecies-richness interval between −1.4 m and −1.0 m that includes extirpation, but not extinction, of some palynospecies. These changes in species richness are not correlated with changes in depositional style or pollen preservation, indicating that they may represent a biological rather than entirely taphonomic signal. Review and reanalysis of previously published data from other localities in the western interior of North America suggest similar declines in species richness within approximately the same stratigraphic interval. However, many of the species absent during the low-species-richness interval reappeared before the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, suggesting changes in community structure and composition before the terminal Cretaceous event—a key prediction of the press-pulse hypothesis—rather than gradual extinction in the latest Cretaceous.

Here we provide a survey of Triceratops localities and accompanying stratigraphic data from the Hell Creek Formation of northeastern Montana. The majority of the sites discussed here were relocated or discovered during the last 5 yr of the Hell Creek Project (1999–2010), a multi-institutional effort to record a large volume of faunal, floral, and geologic data on the Hell Creek Formation in order to test evolutionary, paleoecological, and geological hypotheses. Triceratops is the most abundant dinosaur in the Hell Creek Formation and one of the most common nonavian dinosaurs of the Upper Cretaceous. It is known from hundreds of specimens, which have been collected since it was first described in 1889. Although these specimens provide a wealth of morphological data on Triceratops , many lack detailed stratigraphic information and context. Detailed stratigraphic and contextual data for more than 70 specimens of Triceratops collected during the Hell Creek Project make this data set among the most comprehensive for any nonavian dinosaur.

Here, we describe a juvenile Triceratops sp. skull, UCMP 136306, from the Hell Creek Formation, McCone County, Montana. The relative completeness and superb preservation of this skull contribute to an improved understanding of the cranial ontogeny, morphology, and individual variation in Triceratops . Total skull length is 120 cm long (est.). UCMP 136306 is one of the most complete Triceratops skulls of this ontogenetic stage yet known. The cranial sutures are patent, and most are overlapping with minimal sinuosity, modest interdigitation, and overlapping flat sutural surfaces. The following cranial elements are preserved and described in this study: epinasal, rostral, quadrate, quadratojugal, jugal, pterygoid, dentary, surangular, postorbital horn, parietal, squamosal, epiparietal, episquamosal, occipital condyle, supraoccipital, and exoccipital. For decades following the initial description of Triceratops by O.C. Marsh in 1889, the typical collector attitude was “bigger is better.” Emerging scientific institutions and museums with newly constructed exhibit halls demanded the biggest and newest dinosaurs. We hypothesize that this historical practice, influenced by facies and taphonomic factors in the Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation, Montana (and contemporaneous formations in neighboring states), resulted in the underrepresentation of nonadult Triceratops in museum collections. This practice contributed to the false notion that nonadult Triceratops specimens are rarely preserved in the fossil record, until now.

This chapter documents survivorship across the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) (and Lancian/Puercan) boundary for all 111 species of nonmarine vertebrates from Garfield and McCone counties, Montana. Species-level survivorship appears to be between about 53 and 64 percent after the artifacts caused by paleobiogeography, rarity of some species, and differing evolutionary rates are taken into account. Without correcting for these artifacts, survival is an artificially low 32 percent. If specimens from the Bug Creek interval are early Paleocene (Puercan) in age, survivorship is an almost certainly incorrectly high value of 82 percent. This is because an undetermined number of latest Cretaceous (Lancian) species in the Bug Creek interval probably were reworked from Cretaceous sediments and were extinct by Bug Creek time. Comparison of the Lancian/Puercan transition with the older Judithian/Lancian and younger Puercan/Torrejonian transitions suggests percentage survival is similar among the three (55, 48, and 58 percent, respectively) after the Lazarus effect is considered. These results are not easily explained by a catastrophic mass-extinction scenario for the K/T transition, at least for nonmarine vertebrates. Rather, a geologically rapid but noncatastrophic change, such as the loss of range and habitat diversity during the Late Cretaceous marine regression, is commensurate with the analysis.