Re: Inquiring Minds

[Shaun Sinclair <ssinclai@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca>]

On Wed, 19 Apr 1995 AnmlPeople@aol.com wrote:

> My son Wolf,  age 4.5,  out of the blue today declared,  "I think there were
> some cold-climate dinosaurs."  He hadn't said anything about dinosaurs for
> weeks,  after months of intest interest in anything about them he could find.
>  I explained to him,  as I did several times in the past,  that there
> probably were no cold-climate dinosaurs because dinosaurs were reptiles,  and
> cold-blooded animals like reptiles don't survive in cold climates.

I think that your son wins this one. Dinosaur finds on the north coast of 
Alaska and on the northern Canadian Islands would indicate that dinosaurs 
made it into the arctic circle area. However, you could point out that 
the climate at that time (even within the arctic circle) was warmer than 
it is now. That being said, the winter months would still have had 24 
hours of darkness, and would still have been below freezing (which brings 
up the migration hypotheses again).

So...methinks that you owe your son an ice-cream on this one ;-)


Shaun