They were always considered cold-blooded. They are said to need tropical climates to survive. But this theory is increasingly being refuted. The University of Alaska Fairbanks and Florida State participated in an investigation. And so they found the dinosaur nursery in the Arctic. Many baby dinosaurs stayed in their old homes.
Dinosaur babies
The results are in ‘Current Biology’. “We recently discovered that they lived in the Arctic 70 million years ago.” This explains Pat Druckermiller, director of the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska. “We now have clear evidence that they have taken up residence there. This is the first evidence that they can reproduce at such high latitudes.
Together with Gregory Erickson, they carried out their fieldwork in northern Alaska. They excavated everything from small bird-like animals to giant tyrannosaurs. And now some tiny teeth and bones from seven species of perinatal dinosaurs. Baby dinosaur.
«It was a mystery. Did you emigrate seasonally? Or did they live there? We found remains of perinets representing almost all types of dinosaurs in the formation. It was like a prehistoric “maternity ward”.
Arctic residents
The material was thoroughly examined in the laboratory. The fossils were compared with those from other localities at lower latitudes. So they knew they were perinatal teeth and bones. The dinosaur nursery in the Arctic has proven that they lived there all their lives.
The incubation period of this type of dinosaur varies between 3 and 6 months. The Arctic Summer Is Short Even if dinosaurs laid their eggs in the spring, their offspring would be too young to migrate in the fall.
“Summer had 24 hours of sunlight. Excellent conditions for a growing dinosaur if it could grow fast enough before winter came, ”says Brown, paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
How did they survive the arctic winters? Perhaps the smallest dinosaurs hibernated for the winter. Perhaps others lived on inferior food until spring, like the moose of today. There are no fossils of snakes, frogs, or turtles common at lower latitudes. Cold-blooded species could not survive cold temperatures. But that still doesn’t answer the age-old question: Were dinosaurs warm-blooded? “We believe the endotherm was likely an important part of their survival.”
