Arctic Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs in the Arctic? Has anyone else seen the documentary on NOVA, “Arctic Dinosaurs“? It is about the discovery of at least 8 different species of dinosaur bones found on the North Slope of Alaska, only a stone’s through from the Arctic Ocean. How can that be?

The original discovery was made in 1961 by Shell Oil geologist Robert Liscomb who came across a large fossil. He sent the specimen back to his office, intending to have it classified by a paleontologist.

Unfortunately, Liscomb died the next year, in a rock slide, so they were in a Shell warehouse until about the mid-1980s, when Shell was cleaning house, and they sent them to the U.S.G.S. There, a paleontologist by the name of Charles Repenning, found the bones and immediately recognized that they were dinosaur bones.

Early March 2008, Alaska's North Slope, the frozen Colville River: a team of scientists has pitched camp here, at the base of these cliffs, willing to brave the perilous polar winter to investigate a startling discovery.

They've unearthed dinosaur bones near the North Pole. The animal was called Edmontosaurus, a gentle giant, a 35-foot-long, four-ton, duck-billed plant eater, a member of the Hadrosaur family, found in 70-million-year-old rock, a mere 50 miles from the Arctic Ocean, where temperatures can drop as low as minus-60 degrees Fahrenheit. According to conventional wisdom, it shouldn't be here, because this is how dinosaurs are typically pictured: cold-blooded reptiles living in tropical climes, not in cold, arctic environments like this one. And the Hadrosaur is not alone.

In two sites along Alaska's Colville River, paleontologists have recently unearthed eight distinct species, represented by hundreds of fossils.

Dinosaurs living in the Arctic, a few miles from the current Arctic Ocean. How can that be? Well one things seems sure, it was considerably warmer on Earth when this was going on. Similar have been made discoverys, at about the same time in Earth's history, have been made near the South Pole in Antarctic.

Another interesting thing is conifers and ferns grew right up to the shore of the Arctic Ocean. Finds in the permafrost regarding about the vegetation of the region shows the area was much warmer than today. This implies a temperature that is about 30 degrees warmer than it was today. It means that 70 million plus years ago, when things were warm, dinosaurs were living in the area excavated. They would not be able to survive there today, because of the colder temperatures.

Two-hundred-thirty-million years ago, the Earth was even warmer than it was at the end of the age of dinosaurs. Those conditions fostered a great flowering of diversity, including the evolution of dozens of species which came to dominate the land, the air, the water, and eventually filled every corner of the globe.

And then, 65-million years ago: a devastating blow to the planet...a massive asteroid impact. The prevailing theory is that the resulting explosion threw massive clouds of gas and ash into the air and plunged the Earth into a global winter. The theory held that dinosaurs, tropical animals, were unable to cope with the darkness and the cold that followed. But the discovery that dinosaurs already lived in non-tropical conditions, enduring long periods of darkness, suggests that there must be more to the story.

Who knew that dinosaurs roamed the shores of the Arctic Ocean 70 million years ago, and 230 million years ago it was considerably warmer than it was 65 million years ago, and it was considerably warmed then than it is today. Since about 5 million years ago, Earth has cycled between an ice age and what is referred to as an interglacial period -- Which is what the condidtions are today ... And Interglacial Perido, soon to be followed by a period of glaciation.

There is an online viewable video at the NOVA site.