Scientists have discovered a duck-billed dinosaur that lived in the Arctic Circle roughly 70 million years ago.
The newly described dinosaur was dubbed Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis, which means ancient grazer of the Colville River. It was an herbivore that grew up to 25 feet in length — about the size of a minibus.
The researchers say it was one of more than a dozen of species of dinosaurs that lived in the northernmost region of our planet.
“When we think of dinosaurs, we think of them living in a tropical paradise, but for these dinosaurs, it was more like an Arctic paradise” said Patrick Druckenmiller, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Alaska who helped find the fossils.
If you’re wondering how dinosaurs managed to survive in the Arctic temperatures we know today, the answer is, they didn’t.
Back when Urgunaaluk kuukpikensis roamed the Earth, the Arctic was a more hospitable place, with average temperatures around 45 degrees Fahrenheit and thick conifer forests.
“It was probably comparable to what you would find in Juneau, Alaska, down in the panhandle of the state,” Druckenmiller said. “It wasn’t a warm winter, but it was much warmer than it is today.”
There are several ways a dinosaur could survive in those temperatures — the meat eaters might have been covered with feathers to provide insulation against the cold, while the plant eaters may have been good at storing fat.
It is also incorrect to assume that a dinosaur’s internal temperature is entirely dependent on the external temperature, like some lizards today.
“They were definitely not like a typical lizard in their morphology,” Druckenmiller said. “We all agree that they had some elevated metabolism and body temperature.”
The greater challenge for Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis and its Arctic contemporaries than the cold may have been the long polar night that stretches from mid-October to mid-February — when the sun never rose.
The researchers think the community of dinosaurs did not migrate south during these long dark stretches, so they would have needed to know how to move around in the dark and find food at a time when plants were scarce.
“Moose could be a good analogue,” Druckenmiller said. “They fatten themselves up in the summer and survive on conifer needles in the winter. There’s no reason these dinosaurs weren’t doing the same thing.”
The remains of Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis were discovered in northern Alaska at a site known as the Prince Creek Formation. The formation has been known since the 1980s and paleontologists have been excavating it ever since.
At the time the formation was deposited, it was at about 80 degrees latitude, well above the paleo-Arctic Circle, but over time it has moved south to about 70 degrees latitude, due to the shifting of the Earth’s crust.
But the excavation work is treacherous and expensive. To get to the site, the researchers first have to take small planes or helicopters. Then they board inflatable boats and use the rivers like highways.
“People picture dinosaur digging taking place in the hot summer weather in some desert-y situation,” Druckenmiller said. “We are totally dressed up in full winter gear, and it is 45 degrees and sleeting on us.”
Despite these difficulties, small teams of paleontologists working for 10 to 14 days at a time have pulled thousands of bones from the fossil bed.
So far, they have found 6,000 bones from Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis alone.
“It’s the one we know better than any other,” Druckenmiller said. “We have every bone in its body.”
A paper describing the dinosaur was published Tuesday in Ata Paleontologica Polonica.
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