Approaches to Species Distribution Modelling in Dinosaurs and Other Fossil Organisms

SDM describes a family of methods aiming to predict the geographic distribution of organisms using environmental data such as climate variables. It is a versatile tool in estimating ecological communities and interactions both spatially and through time. However, it has had limited utility in predicting the geographic distribution of fossil organisms. Due to preservation and sampling biases, fossil data does not satisfy the assumptions of species distribution models. Here is presented an analysis proposing a new methodology, which substitutes the conventional pseudoabsence data for fossil occurrences from non-target species. This approach eliminates variation in preservation and sampling, and returns a SDM which performs better than a conventional example. This model concludes that the ceratopsian Triceratops may have been widespread across North America, and beyond the region where its fossils have been recovered. The geographic distribution of Triceratops appears to have been governed by seasonality in temperature and temperature of the coldest month.