GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF DINOSAURS.
Remains of Dinosaurs have been found in all the continents, but
chiefly in Europe and North America. Explorations in other parts of
the world have not as yet been sufficient to show whether or not each
continent developed especial kinds peculiar to it, nor to afford any
reliable evidence as to whether the relations of the continents were
different during the Mesozoic. Thus far, the Carnivorous group seems
most widespread, for it alone has been found in Australia. The
Sauropods or Amphibious Dinosaurs have been found in Europe, North
America, India, Madagascar, Patagonia, and Africa, sufficient to show
that their distribution was world wide with the possible exception of
Australia, and probable exception of most oceanic islands (few of the
modern oceanic islands existed at that time although there may well
have been many others no longer extant). The Beaked Dinosaurs are more
limited in their distribution, for none of them so far as at present
known reached Australia or South America. But in the present stage of
discovery it would be rash to conclude that they were surely limited
to the regions where they have been discovered. It is not wholly
clear as yet whether the Dinosaurian fauna that flourished at the end
of the Jurassic in the north survived to the Upper Cretacic in the
southern continents, but present evidence points that way, and
indicates that the girdle of ocean which during the Cretacic
depression encircled the northern world, formed a barrier which the
Cretacic dinosaurian fauna never succeeded in crossing.
The earlier groups of Beaked Dinosaurs are found in both Europe and
America, and in the Cretacic the Duck-billed and Armored groups are
represented in both regions. The Horned Dinosaurs, however, are known
with certainty only from North America.
While most of the important fossil specimens in this country have been
found in the West, more fragmentary remains have been found on the
Atlantic sea-board, and it is probable that they ranged all over the
intervening region, wherever they found an environment suited to their
particular needs.