The first dinosaur bones have been found at the Denali National Park in Alaska. The discovery comes after an expedition by a group of paleontologists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and National Park Service was carried out in July.
The team came across fossilized impressions of pre-historic ancient animals in many of the newly traced dinosaur tracks. Following the discovery, a collaborative project has been formed to explore further research. It is headed by Pat Druckenmiller, Earth sciences curator at the University Of Alaska Museum of the North.
"This marks the beginning of a multi-year project to locate, document and study dinosaur fossils in Denali National Park," said Druckenmiller, adding that a new chapter in the story of Denali dinosaurs has been opened.
The curator explained that tracks are basically footprints of dinosaurs imprinted in mud, which became rock later on. Unlike tracks, bones elicit broader information even in their smaller specimens.
Affirming that the National park is quite rich in world-class dinosaur tracks, Druckenmiller said the park has rare vestiges of animals that lived in the Cretaceous Period.
The research team was able to unearth four fragments though no remains of vertebrate animals have been found, such as birds, mammals or flying reptiles.
The Dinosaur Quest
In Denali Park, the dinosaur quest started in 2005. Starting with the first track at Cantwell Formation found by UAF students, thousands of dinosaur tracks were discovered by paleontologists later. However, this is the first time that bones of dinosaurs have been spotted.
Denny Capps, a Park geologist at Denali National Park said the park was built to protect the ancient ecosystem.
Adding more momentum to the studies, Gregory Erickson, of Florida State University is making some slender sections of the fossils and hoping that such slices can get a detailed examination to reveal the animal's age better through vivid signals and patterns.
Erickson along with Druckenmiller examined a piece of tendon that was found and concluded that it was of hadrosaur and belonged to a bigger ornithopod dinosaur.
Such herbivorous dinosaurs might have been abundant in Alaska and could have roamed in tracks now being found in the park.
Throwing insights into the topography of Alaska of Cretaceous Period, Druckenmiller and Erickson had previously written articles suggesting the existence of polar fauna in the region and Arctic having been covered by a polar forest as the climate was much warmer.
They also suggested possible hard times for the dinosaurs of that time as they had to brave the unusual environments of long winter darkness and chilling temperatures.
