More than one thousand dinosaur bone fragments have been found in Alaska! They represent at least 13 different species which lived during the Late Cretaceous Period 65 to 97 million years ago. Most have been recovered from sedimentary rocks along the banks of the Colville River on the Arctic Coastal Plain. The fossils recovered from this area are spectacular in that they represent a greater number of specimens and a greater number of species than all the other Polar dinosaurs combined. Although this location was discovered in l961, its significance was not realized until the 1980's.

During the 1990's two surprising discoveries were made in the Talkeetna Mountains. A portion of a skull of an armored dinosaur was identified and the partial skeleton of a small hadrosaur ("Lizzie") was found. Both dinosaurs were preserved in mudstones containing shellfish which meant their bodies had been buried in an ancient sea floor. This type of preservation is very rare as dinosaurs lived on land and are usually found in stream or lake deposits.

Finding dinosaurs at high latitudes has caused paleontologist to rethink their ideas about the environment required by these fascinating beasts. In order to survive temperatures at or close to freezing, they must have been more lively than originally thought! Understanding creatures which lived millions of years ago is very challenging, but startling new discoveries are always around the corner!

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