North Dakota NORTH DAKOTAS HELL CREEK DELTA

Stratigraphy
AGES MILLIONS
OF YEARS AGO

QUATERNARY PERIOD
EPOCH
ROCK ROCK UNIT
COLUMN During the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago, a well drained lowland
.01
Holocene
Pleistocene Oahe corridor existed between the rising Rocky Mountains and the Western
Interior Seaway to the east. Sediments eroded from the Rocky Mountains
Coleharbor
were carried to this western North Dakota lowland by rivers and streams
1.8
5
Pliocene Unnamed and were deposited in a huge delta, the Hell Creek Delta. These
Miocene

25 Arikaree
sediments, now turned into sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone, are called
the Hell Creek Formation. Woodlands, ponds, and swamps that existed on
Oligocene

Brule this subtropical, deltaic coastal plain provided habitats for many kinds of
38 exotic plants and animals including several species of dinosaurs such as
South Heart
Chadron
Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex. Freshwater fishes, salamanders,
Eocene

Chalky Buttes

Golden Camels Butte lizards, turtles, crocodiles, birds, snails, clams and small mammals coexisted
55 Valley Bear Den
with the dinosaurs. Fossils of animals, including sharks, rays, and
TERTIARY

Sentinel
mosasaurs (large marine lizards) that inhabited shallow marine waters
Butte adjacent to the delta are found in the Fox Hills Formation and Breien
Member of the Hell Creek Formation. The species of dinosaurs that
existed at this time were the last dinosaurs to ever live.
Paleocene

Bullion
Creek

Slope

Cannonball

Ludlow
65

Hell Creek

Fox Hills
CRETACEOUS

Pierre

84
Niobrara

Carlile

Carbonate Calcareous Shale Claystone/Shale

Outcrop in Sioux County showing the Fox Hills Formation (Cretaceous)
Siltstone Sandstone Sand & Gravel
overlain by the Hell Creek Formation (Cretaceous). The marine Breien
Mudstone Lignite Glacial Drift
Member of the Hell Creek Formation caps the hill. Outcrop is 35 m thick.
View is to the northeast.

ND State Fossil Collection Prehistoric Life of ND Map

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