Storms that built a graveyard: ancient monsoons created a spectacular dinosaur fossil site
Researchers have reconstructed the climate of a Late Cretaceous fossil site in Italy, revealing it was a tropical coastline impacted by intense monsoons. The site, known as Villaggio del Pescatore, provides a rare, high-resolution look at dinosaur life and challenges previous theories about dwarfism in the species Tethyshadros insularis.
Around 80 million years ago, a stretch of tropical coastline in what is now north-eastern Italy was lashed by monsoon rains and tropical cyclones. Those storms swept dinosaur carcasses, crocodiles, plants and river mud onto a tidal flat, where the tides and a film of microbes sealed everything away with extraordinary preservation.
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