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Science 25 September 1987:
Vol. 237. no. 4822, pp. 1608 - 1610
DOI: 10.1126/science.237.4822.1608
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Articles

Dinosaurs on the North Slope, Alaska: High Latitude, Latest Cretaceous Environments

ELISABETH M. BROUWERS 1, WILLIAM A. CLEMENS 2, ROBERT A. SPICER 3, THOMAS A. AGER 4, L. DAVID CARTER 5, and WILLIAM V. SLITER 6

1 U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, CO 80225.
2 Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.
3 Life Science, Goldsmiths' College, Creek Road, London SE8 3BU, United Kingdom.
4 U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA 22092.
5 U.S. Geological Survey, Anchorage, AK 99508.
6 U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA 94025.

Abundant skeletal remains demonstrate that lambeosaurine hadrosaurid, tyrannosaurid, and troodontid dinosaurs lived on the Alaskan North Slope during late Campanian—early Maestrichtian time (about 66 to 76 million years ago) in a deltaic environment dominated by herbaceous vegetation. The high ground terrestrial plant community was a mild- to cold-temperate forest composed of coniferous and broad leaf trees. The high paleolatitude (about 70° to 85° North) implies extreme seasonal variation in solar insolation, temperature, and herbivore food supply. Great distances of migration to contemporaneous evergreen floras and the presence of both juvenile and adult hadrosaurs suggest that they remained at high latitudes year-round. This challenges the hypothesis that short-term periods of darkness and temperature decrease resulting from a bolide impact caused dinosaurian extinction.

Submitted on February 26, 1987
Accepted on July 27, 1987


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