If I could travel to any ancient environment, where would I go? The question always stalls me. There are so many to choose from - most of all habitats in the mountains, in the deep seas, and other places that did not create fossils. But I know my heart answer, the one I always go to. It has to be the Morrison Formation floodplains of the Late Jurassic.

Morrison Formation habitats were weird. Winding streams and ponds spread across lowlands dotted with ginkgoes and conifers, horsetails reaching up from the water’s edge along the fringes of ancient clearings full of ferns and cycads. There were no grasses, and perhaps no angiosperms of any kind. And in this place, dinosaurs. Not just a few. But an incredible abundance. The lush plant life fed Camptosaurus, Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, and more, in turn preyed upon by carnivores that ranged from pipsqueak tyrannosaurs like Stokesosaurus to hulking, multi-ton meat-eaters such as Allosaurus and Torvosaurus. If you were to travel to ancient Utah circa 150 million years ago, the world would look fundamentally different.

How on Earth did such an ecology work?