One of the most delightful things about science is how wrong we sometimes get things. Take dinosaurs. I recognize dinosaurs aren’t space, but Earth is a planet and dinosaurs were early life that was wiped out by an asteroid from space, so we’re going to talk dinosaurs for a moment. 

Growing up, like most little kids, I was totally into dinosaurs. To be fair not much has changed other than I somehow forgot most dinosaur names, which have admittedly mostly changed anyway. Once upon my childhood, we thought they were basically massive, cold-blooded reptiles, and like the iguanas that fall out of trees on cold Florida days, it was thought they just wouldn’t cope so well with cold.

We were wrong.

Dinosaurs were giant birds not giant lizards and, as such, seem to have been warm-blooded, and like birds, they occupied all sorts of ecosystems lizards dare not enter.

New research published in Current Biology examines fossils from a region of Alaska that was near the North Pole when dinosaurs thrived and had weather not too different from snowy, cold Ottawa. These fossils demonstrate that at least seven species of large and small dinosaurs were likely living year-round in this arctic region, breeding and raising their young, and surviving through the long, dark cold winter of the extreme north. This work was led by Patrick Druckenmiller who reports: It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of finding any dinosaurs in such extreme latitudes and environments was a surprise. 

Co-author Gregory Erickson goes on to say: Cold-blooded terrestrial vertebrates like amphibians, lizards, and crocodilians have yet to be found, only warm-blooded birds and mammals–and dinosaurs. I think that this is some of the most compelling evidence that dinosaurs were in fact warm-blooded.

And don’t forget the feathers. These dinosaurs may have had feathers to help keep them warm.

More Information

For some dinosaurs, the Arctic may have been a great place to raise a family (Science News)

“Nesting at extreme polar latitudes by non-avian dinosaurs,” Patrick S. Druckenmiller et al., 2021 June 24, Current Biology