Why Are Current Claims of Paleocene Non-Avian Dinosaur Fossils Still Unconvincing?

The Paleocene, the first epoch of the Paleogene, marks the beginning of the Cenozoic after the end of the Cretaceous. The phrase "Paleocene non-avian dinosaur" therefore challenges one of the most familiar boundaries in palaeontology: non-avian dinosaurs became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, and no non-avian dinosaurs are known to have lived during the Paleocene. If non-avian dinosaurs truly survived into the Paleocene, that would reshape our understanding of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.

Since the nineteenth century, scattered reports of supposed Paleocene non-avian dinosaurs have appeared in the scientific literature. Although not numerous, these claims are geographically widespread, having been made in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. At first glance, this makes the question tempting. Yet once researchers examine the cases one by one, the situation quickly becomes more complicated. Many specimens are not dinosaur fossils at all; some are actually crocodilian remains. Other fossils may indeed be dinosaurian, but they come from strata whose ages were incorrectly interpreted. Still other cases involve an even more difficult issue: whether some Cretaceous fossils were geologically reworked and moved into younger Paleocene sediments, leading them to be mistaken for Paleocene non-avian dinosaurs.

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