Appalachia

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In the Mesozoic Era, Appalachia was a land area which is now an eastern part of the USA, separated from Laramidia by the Western Interior Seaway, which shrank and became the Pierre Seaway and finally dried up. Laramidia was roughly what is now the western cordillera area of the USA and Canada.

Fauna

From the Turonian age of the Late Cretaceous to the very beginning of the Paleocene, Appalachia was separated from the rest of North America. Because of this, its fauna was isolated, and developed very differently from the tyrannosaur and ceratopsian dominated fauna of the Western Part of North America. Due to few fossiliferous deposits and many of Appalachia's fossil formations being destroyed by the Pleistocene ice age, little is known about Appalachia. In addition, many fossils that have been found in Appalachia lie unstudied and remain in the inaccurate genera they have been in since the days of E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh, due to lack of interest in Appalachia. However, a few fossil sites have given us a glimpse into this forgotten world of paleontology.

In Cretaceous North America, the dominant predators were the tyrannosaurs, huge predatory theropods with equally massive heads built for ripping flesh from their prey. Tyrannosaurs were the dominant predators in Appalachia too, but rather than the massive tyrannosaurine tyrannosaurs, the dryptosaurs were the top predators of Appalachia. Rather than developing the huge heads and massive bodies of their kin, dryptosaurs had more in common with the basal tyrannosaurs like Dilong and Eotyrannus, having long arms with three fingers, a more lithe skull and body, and were not as large as the largest tyrannosaurids. Two genera of Appalachian dryptosaurs are known, Dryptosaurus and Appalachiosaurus.

Another common group of Appalachian dinosaurs were the hadrosaurs. While there was a staggering diversity of hadrosaurs on the western side of the seaway, the hadrosaurs of Appalachia were more primitive in nature and less diverse, though this is probably due to the lack of fossil sites in eastern North America. Many hadrosaurs are known from Appalachia, such as Lophorhothon, Hypsibema, and Hadrosaurus. The hadrosaur Claosaurus, which floated into the Interior Seaway and was found in Kansas, might also be from Appalachia, since it was found closer to the Appalachia side of the seaway and is unknown from Western North America. Hypsibema was the titan amongst these, over fifty feet long and must have certainly taken the place of sauropods in Appalachia.

The nodosaurs, a group of armored dinosaurs resembling an armadillo crossed with a panzer tank, are another testament to Appalachia's difference from Western North America. By the latest Cretaceous, nodosaurs were scarce in Western North America, existing only in specialized forms like Edmontonia and Panoplosaurus. Nodosaur scutes have been found in Eastern North America, not diagnostic enough to identify the species, but enough to tell that these armored dinosaurs were reasonably common in Appalachia.

Ornithomimid bones have been reported from Appalachia, but it is now believed that these are the bones of juvenile dryptosaurs.