Arctic Dinosaurs: Could Global Warming Mark a Return to Normal?

CR4 Members:

I missed the series on PBS regarding the Artic Dinos.

Has the subject of evidence of a lush enviroment in the far north ever been discussed. Could global warming be a return to normal? The plants found up north are pretty amazing. Google--'artic dinosaurs' for more info. Sorry if this is a dead horse.

for

NEWS ARTICLE:

Seventy million years ago, northern Alaska was farther north than it is today. How then, did the locals—northern dinosaurs—survive, and what might they tell us about the future?

A team of scientists from Texas and Fairbanks will try to answer those questions this summer on Alaska's North Slope, the treeless plain north of the Brooks Range. There, protruding from banks of the Colville River, are some of the richest fossils beds of northern dinosaurs.

Paul McCarthy will be one of the scientists heading north. McCarthy, a geologist and assistant professor at the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute and College of Natural Sciences and Math, studies ancient soils to see what the climate might have been like in the time of the dinosaurs.

Scientists work at the Kikak-Tegoseak dinosaur bone quarry on Alaska's North Slope in 2002. This site has yielded a large amount of horned dinosaur bones and bones from other dinosaurs, such as hadrosaurs and theropods. Tony Fiorillo photo.

"I'm hoping to learn something new about the dinosaurs' environment by the dirt between their toes, so to speak," McCarthy said.

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