Dinosaur tracks found in Alaska are the recent rare sightings that scientists have discovered in one of the countries that experience the midnight sun. Hence, researchers are quite baffled whether dinosaurs indeed preferred living at polar latitudes all year round.
The dinosaur tracks found in Alaska were specifically discovered in Denali National Park, and authorities believe that the tracks belong to large herd of duck-billed dinosaurs that used to exist and thrive in the area during the Late Cretaceous Period, which is said to be 70 million years ago, Discover News has learned.
"We had mom, dad, big brother, big sister and little babies all running around together," paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, who is directly involved in the research on the dinosaur tracks found in Alaska, said.
"As I like to tell the park, Denali was a family destination for millions of years, and now we've got the fossil evidence for it," Fiorillo added.
The rare dinosaur tracks found in Alaska are now considered to be major evidence to an age-old theory that dinosaurs preferred to stay at polar latitudes all year round.
"Even back then the high latitudes were biologically productive and could support big herds of pretty big animals," Fiorillo, who is a curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, said of the significance of the dinosaur tracks found in Alaska.
According to several reports, the site where the dinosaur tracks found in Alaska is near the Cabin Peak, which is situated in the park's northeast corner.
There are over thousands of dinosaur tracks found in Alaska and all of which are currently speculated to belong to hadrosaurs or the duck-billed dinosaurs.
Preserved skin and numerous "nail" impressions from the herbivore dinosaurs were seen on the area where the dinosaur tracks were found.
"This is definitely one of the great track sites of the world. We were so happy to find it," Fiorillo quipped of the rare finding.
Fiorillo and his team noted that the dinosaur tracks found in Alaska have somehow managed to stand the test of time as proven by the presence of clams, birds and bugs intermingled with the dinosaur footprints.
Apart from the tracks of the hadrosaurs, there are also some which are currently being linked to certopsians, therizinosaurs and pterosaurs of the flying reptiles.
Because the ground where the dinosaur tracks were found in Alaska is very muddy, researchers had a hard time in counting and categorizing them by size.
Nevertheless, they managed to pull out tracks from individual hadrosaurs and they have grouped the dinosaur tracks by four distinct size rangers.
The dinosaur tracks found in Mexico vary in length - specifically from 5 inches to 24 inches. Out of the numerous recognizable footprints, 80 percent is attributed to have been formed by adult hadrosaurs, 13 percent is being linked to young duck-billed dinosaurs and only 3 percent is being credited to the juvenile age group.
In relation to a previous study, Fiorillo and his collaborators opine that the small number of juvenile dinosaur tracks found in Alaska explains the possibility that the juvenile species of the extinct group of dinosaurs underwent rapid growth spurt; hence, they quickly transformed into young duckbills and later on into their adult forms.
Another theory that scientists are pushing suggests that the juveniles were incapable of enduring a long migration; thus, the herd spent their entire lives in the Arctic without even moving from one place to another.
Fiorillo and his colleagues from Japan, Texas, and Alaska continue to conduct some testing on the dinosaur tracks found in Alaska. They began their research on the rare sightings in 2011, and they even managed to collect Denali dinosaur fossils and put a couple of hadrosaur footprints on display at the Perot Museum in Texas, according to Fox News.
In September 2013, thousands of dinosaur tracks were also found along Alaska's Yukon river.
"We found dinosaur footprints by the scores on literally every outcrop we stopped at," Paul McCarthy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks said at the time.
"I've seen dinosaur footprints in Alaska now in rocks from southwest Alaska, the North Slope and Denali National Park in the Interior, but there aren't many places where footprints occur in such abundance," McCarthy added.
According to Live Science, scientists, who found the dinosaur tracks near Alaska's Yukon river, managed to retrieve approximately 2,000 pounds of footprint fossils out of their once in a lifetime discovery.
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