Neat stuff. Thanks for posting.
1) Nobody's totally sure if Dinosaurs were cold blooded or warm blooded.
2)
Though we know that most certainly didn't kill the Dinosaurs.
3)
No large predators?
What about Leopard Seals?
From The Dallas Morning News ...
Antarctic researchers bring two new dinosaurs in from the coldFossils show previously unknown creatures once roamed continent
09:48 PM CST on Thursday, February 26, 2004
Digging on an icy island and a mountain near the South Pole, scientists have unearthed the bones of two unknown dinosaur species in Antarctica.
Until now, the frozen continent which wasn't as cold when dinosaurs roamed the Earth had yielded only a handful of dinosaur fossils.
In life, one of the newfound creatures would have stretched 30 feet long, making it the largest dinosaur ever found in Antarctica. The other, which lived 120 million years later, may represent the last holdout of a group of dinosaurs that had already died out elsewhere on Earth.
"Antarctica still holds surprises for us," said Judd Case, a paleontologist at St. Mary's College of California who led one of the two expeditions.
Both discoveries were made in December and announced at a news briefing Thursday in Washington, D.C. Neither fossil has yet received a formal scientific name.
During the age of dinosaurs, temperatures in Antarctica were cool but not cold perhaps similar to Seattle's climate, Dr. Case said. At the time, continental drift had not yet separated Antarctica from neighboring South America and Australia.
Because Antarctica makes up nearly 10 percent of the planet's landmass, there should be plenty of records of past life, said Scott Borg, head of Antarctic sciences at the National Science Foundation, which coordinates U.S. polar research.
The problem is finding places that aren't covered by ice.
For instance, to chisel the 30-foot-long dinosaur out of the ground, scientists had to set up base camp on a glacier near the 13,000-foot-high Mount Kirkpatrick, just 400 miles from the South Pole. Crew members shuttled to the mountain in pairs because the air was too thin to support a full helicopter load of six people, said team leader William Hammer of Augustana College in Illinois.
Dr. Hammer had gone to Mount Kirkpatrick because it was where he had discovered another rare dinosaur, Cryolophosaurus, in 1991. This time, the five paleontologists on the team were so consumed with digging more Cryolophosaurus bones that it was the group's mountaineer, out for a walk, who first spotted bones from the unknown dinosaur.
Using gasoline-powered saws and jackhammers, the team eventually chiseled out 3,000 pounds of bone-laden rock, which is being shipped back from Antarctica.
Because the scientists haven't been able to study the fossil in detail, they can say only that it belongs to the group of four-legged, long-necked, plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropods. The creature lived in the early Jurassic period, about 190 million years ago a time when little is known about dinosaurs, especially in Antarctica.
"It really is one of the more interesting animals that's been found in the past 10 years," said Philip Currie, a team member with the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta.
Island discovery
About 2,000 miles north, and within the same week, Dr. Case's team found its meat-eating dinosaur fossil.
This two-legged creature, which was roughly the height of a man, lived about 70 million years ago. When it died, its corpse apparently drifted out to sea and became buried in marine sediments, which today make up part of James Ross Island.
The team members hadn't even been headed there; they had wanted to visit a nearby island, but ice blocked their ship's path and forced them to settle for James Ross Island instead, said James Martin of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.
On finding the fossils, the team collected teeth, jawbones, and leg and foot bones that showed the creature was a species unknown to science. It belonged to the group known as theropods, from which modern birds are descended.
Similar theropods appear to have died out earlier on other continents. For some reason, this animal managed to hang on in Antarctica, Dr. Case said.
After battling a frozen passage and then crawling on their hands and knees for days on end, the scientists were glad to return home with a real discovery.
"It's a big sense of relief that you've found something of significance," Dr. Case said.
E-mail awitze@dallasnews.com
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022704dnnatdinosaur.2f5d7d93.html
Yuck. An ugly bugger. Not sure if this is the vegetarian or the man-eater.
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