page_title: Milk River Formation
section_title: Dinosaurs
hierarchical_section_title: Milk River Formation / Vertebrates / Dinosaurs
caption_attribution_description: Acrotholus audeti restoration
context_page_description: The Milk River Formation is a sandstone-dominated stratigraphic unit of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in southern Alberta, Canada. It was deposited in near-shore to coastal environments during Late Cretaceous time. Based on uranium-lead dating, palynology and stratigraphic relationships, deposition occurred between ~84.5 and 83.5 Ma.
  The sandstones of the Virgelle Member in the centre of the formation are well-exposed at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southwestern Alberta, where they bear petroglyphs carved into them by First Nations people.
  The formation is fossiliferous and has yielded an extensive vertebrate fauna, as well as fossil ammonites. In some areas it hosts shallow natural gas reservoirs.
context_section_description: Indeterminate Ankylosauridae, Aves, Ceratopsidae, Dromaeosauridae, Hadrosauridae, Nodosauridae, Ornithomimidae, Pachycephalosauridae, Protoceratopsidae, Thescelosauridae, and Tyrannosauridae genera and species.
caption: Acrotholus
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