Re: Polar Edmontosaurus endured long winter nights

[Daniel Bensen <bensen.daniel@gmail.com>]

This is so cool. At a stroke, they've told us that polar late-K
winters were cold and dark and stressful, and that Edmontosaurs didn't
migrate away from them. I wonder if other dinosaurs (Anatotitan?) did.
Dan

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 7:13 PM, Ben Creisler <bcreisler@gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Ben Creisler
> bcreisler@gmail.com
>
> A new online paper:
>
>
> Chinsamy, A., Thomas, D. B., Tumarkin-Deratzian, A. R. and Fiorillo,
> A. R. (2012)
> Hadrosaurs Were Perennial Polar Residents.
> The Anatomical Record: Advances in Integrative Anatomy and
> Evolutionary Biology (advance online publication)
> doi: 10.1002/ar.22428
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.22428/abstract
>
>
> Recent biomechanical evidence has fuelled debate surrounding the
> winter habits of the hadrosaurian dinosaur Edmontosaurus (ca. 70 Ma).
> Using histological characteristics recorded in bone, we show that
> polar Edmontosaurus endured the long winter night. In contrast, the
> bone microstructure of temperate Edmontosaurus is inconsistent with a
> perennially harsh environment. Differences in the bone microstructure
> of polar and temperate Edmontosaurus consequently dispute the
> hypothesis that polar populations were migratory. The overwintering
> signal preserved in the microstructure of polar Edmontosaurus bone
> offers significant insight into the life history of dinosaurs within
> the Late Cretaceous Arctic.