Were there Dinosaurs in Antarctica? The answer to that question, in short would be, yes! Dinosaurs definitively existed in Antarctica and you might be wondering how could it be possible, Antarctica is frozen hell-scape for anyone, much more to cold-blooded animals. Well you are not wrong but around 66 million years ago, Antarctica was a flourishing land with vegetation and all sorts of animals, dinosaurs included and once more, dinosaurs were not cold-blooded, even though we call them reptiles, because cold blood would not allow for an active lifestyle which the dinosaurs led, much like birds. So now that we established that dinosaurs did live in Antarctica, let’s find out which ones.
Here is a comprehensive list showing which dinosaurs lived in Antarctica:
- Antarctopelta (Snow Hill Island Formation, Late Cretaceous, 2006)
- Crylophosaurus (Hanson Formation, Early Jurassic, 1994)
- Glacialisaurus (Hanson Formation, Early Jurassic, 2007)
- Imperobator (Snow Hill Island Formation, Late Cretaceous, 2019)
- Morrosaurus (Snow Hill Island Formation, Late Cretaceous, 2016)
- Trinisaura (Snow Hill Island Formation, Late Cretaceous, 2013)
Unsurprisingly, there are not a lot of dinosaurs found but the obvious reason would be hellishly cold temperatures for paleontologists to go out and find fossils but we are at least, very lucky, to find some dinosaurs from various different periods and it provides a look into the past that Dinosaurs truly roamed the Earth.
Do let me know in the comments below if you would like an in-depth about each of the Dinosaurs mentioned in the list and I will be glad to make a post about it!! You can check out more different kinds of post from the Explore page!!
References:
- Soto-Acuña, Sergio; Vargas, Alexander O.; Kaluza, Jonatan; Leppe, Marcelo A.; Botelho, Joao F.; Palma-Liberona, José; Simon-Gutstein, Carolina; Fernández, Roy A.; Ortiz, Héctor; Milla, Verónica; Aravena, Bárbara; Manríquez, Leslie M. E.; Alarcón-Muñoz, Jhonatan; Pino, Juan Pablo; Trevisan, Cristine; Mansilla, Héctor; Hinojosa, Luis Felipe; Muñoz-Walther, Vicente; Rubilar-Rogers, David (9 December 2021). “Bizarre tail weaponry in a transitional ankylosaur from subantarctic Chile”. Nature. 600 (7888): 259–263. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04147-1. PMID 34853468. S2CID 244799975.
- Rozadilla, Sebastián; Agnolín, Federico Lisandro; Novas, Fernando Emilio (17 December 2019). “Osteology of the Patagonian ornithopod Talenkauen santacrucensis (Dinosauria, Ornithischia)”. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 17 (24): 2043–2089. doi:10.1080/14772019.2019.1582562. ISSN 1477-2019. S2CID 155344014.
- Smith, N.D.; Makovicky, P.J.; Pol, D.; Hammer, W.R. & Currie, P.J. (2007). “The Dinosaurs of the Early Jurassic Hanson Formation of the Central Transantarctic Mountains: Phylogenetic Review and Synthesis” (PDF). U.S. Geological Survey and the National Academies. 2007 (1047srp003): 5 pp. doi:10.3133/of2007-1047.srp003.
- Motta, M. J.; Agnolín, F. L.; Brissón Egli, F.; Novas, F. E. (2024). “Unenlagiid affinities for Imperobator antarcticus (Paraves: Theropoda): paleobiogeographical implications”. Ameghiniana. doi:10.5710/AMGH.13.11.2024.3604.
