Scientists discovered fossil evidence of a minimum of 7 species of dinosaurs reproducing at the Prince Creek Formation in northern Alaska. While the researchers didnt find eggshells or nests, they did discover dinosaur embryos and just-hatched babies, which could provide even greater insight into these animals, stated research study author Patrick Druckenmiller, teacher of geology and director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North.”Dinosaur eggshell is good, but you cant typically tell very specifically who laid the eggs,” he said. With teeth and bones, scientists can utilize them to identify the genus or species of an animal, he added. Its not likely the dinosaurs gave birth and after that moved to warmer climates due to the fact that the little babies wouldnt have been able to make “a long trek prior to the onset of a long, dark, cold winter,” he said.The weather condition these animals faced over 70 million years ago averaged 42 degrees Fahrenheit (5.6 degrees Celsius), he kept in mind, with freezing winter seasons. Throughout those cold months, the dinosaurs were plunged into 4 months of total darkness, making it much more tough to make it through the extreme environment, Druckenmiller said.Finding the little bones and teeth were no easy job, he added.When Druckenmiller and his team excavated the website, they kept every grain of sediment to inspect. Each piece bigger than half a millimeter was preserved and analyzed under a microscopic lense.”Over the last decade we need to have inspected numerous countless little grains of sand to find a complete handful of fossils,” Druckenmiller said.The discoveries of “polar dinosaurs” in high latitudes has actually been somewhat bewildering, said Anthony Fiorillo, senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who was not included in the study.Body heat in the coldFossils found in the Arctic over the previous 20 years have actually helped scientists much better understand how dinosaurs grew in cold environments, he said.”The worth of this research study is that it expands our understanding to now consist of lots of type of dinosaurs living year-round in the Cretaceous Arctic,” Fiorillo said.This discovery also points to the concept that dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded animals, Druckenmiller said. Unlike cold-blooded animals like lizards and crocodiles, who count on their external environment to regulate their body temperature, warm-blooded animals can make their own internal heat.This isnt the very first research study to assume this theory, “however it does provide more support to the idea of dinosaurian warm-bloodedness,” Fiorillo said.Druckenmillers team still has much to study, he said, consisting of the way of life of these dinosaurs. The plant eaters might have survived off low-quality forage to endure the winter, he said, while small types might have hibernated.

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