A trio of paleontologists has discovered a remarkable new tracksite in Alaska’s Denali National Park filled with duck-billed dinosaur footprints — technically referred to as hadrosaurs — that demonstrates they not only lived in multi-generational herds but thrived in the ancient high-latitude, polar ecosystem.
The paper provides new insight into the herd structure and paleobiology of northern polar dinosaurs in an arctic greenhouse world.
The article, “Herd structure in Late Cretaceous polar dinosaurs: A remarkable new dinosaur tracksite, Denali National Park, Alaska, USA,” was written for Geology by lead author Anthony R. Fiorillo, curator of earth sciences at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, and co-authors Stephen Hasiotis of the University of Kansas and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi of the Hokkaido University Museum.
“Denali is one of the best dinosaur footprint localities in the world. What we found that last day was incredible — so many tracks, so big and well preserved,” said Fiorillo. “Many had skin impressions, so we could see what the bottom of their feet looked like. There were many invertebrate traces — imprints of bugs, worms, larvae and more — which were important because they showed an ecosystem existed during the warm parts of the years.”
Note : The above story is based on materials provided by Geological Society of America.
