New dinosaur species found in Alaska

Researchers also believe the dinosaur was a variety of hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur that roamed in herds. During the late Cretaceous period much of Alaska was covered in relatively temperate polar forests that were heavily populated by deciduous trees, which lose their leaves during the winter. The dinosaur lived in obscurity for a considerable length of time and most likely experienced snow, analysts said.

“It was certainly not like the Arctic today up there – probably in the 40s (5 to 9 degrees Celsius) was the mean annual temperature”, Erickson said. “Probably a good analogy is thinking about British Columbia.”

But if they didn’t migrate, how did they survive?

The hadrosaurus, also know as duckbills, has been found in 1961 in the Prince Creek Formation area in Alaska, but researchers have only now assigned it to a distinct species. Researchers compared the trove of fossils at the museum with the bones of hadrosaurs found elsewhere and spotted several differences. Then they have to come in on tiny bush planes and take inflatable boats down rivers plagued by crumbling cliffs. Ugrunaaluk is far and away the most complete dinosaur yet found in the Arctic or any polar region, Druckenmiller said, adding that they have multiple elements of every single bone in the body.

Researchers were surprised to see an abundance of fossilized evidence of 10,000 bones where this species has been confused with another dinosaur species called Edmontosaurus, as the fossils were mostly common in the United States and Canada. Most were little adolescents assessed to have spoken the truth 9 feet long and 3-feet tall at the hips.

The paleontologists believe a herd of juvenile Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis was killed suddenly to create this deposit of remains.

A bone analysis showed that the newfound species is closely related to Edmontosaurus, another type of hadrosaur that lived about 70 million years ago in present-day Alberta, Montana and South Dakota. The formal study of the Alaska dinosaur, however, revealed differences in skull and mouth features that made it a different species, Dr Druckenmiller said. The new species, dubbed Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis, is the northernmost on record, explain researchers at Florida State University.

Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis translates to “ancient grazer” and was chosen by scientists with assistance from speakers of Inupiaq, the language of Alaska Inupiat Eskimos. So, the dinosaurs found there lived as far north as land is known to have existed during this time period. Hirotsugu Mori, a co-author of the research paper and former graduate student at University of Alaska Fairbanks, provided a detailed analysis that helped confirm the unbelievable find.