The Paleontology of North America

The Cretaceous in Tennessee, US

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See exposures in this state from the:

Quaternary
Tertiary
Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Carboniferous
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian

Cretaceous Fossils

No slide show is available for the Cretaceous in Tennessee.

Paleontology and geology

Cretaceous rocks are exposed in a north-south band across western Tennessee. These rocks are part of the Mississippi Embayment, an area covered by a shallow sea that flooded the region as North and South America moved farther apart during the breakup of the supercontinent of Pangea. Invertebrate fossils are abundant in these rocks, including clams, oysters, snails, and crinoids. The official state fossil of Tennessee is a small bivalve, Pterotrigonia thoracica, found in Cretaceous rocks. The only dinosaur bones found thus far in Tennessee are those of the plant-eating hadrosaur Edmontosaurus that lived during this time.

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