Paleontologist Matthew Vavrek, who is studying the fossil, said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that day that the hadrosaur vertebra was discovered on Axel Heiberg Island in the Nunavut territory, located at approximately 75 degrees north latitude, 500 kilometers north of the northernmost permanent human settlement. The relevant research findings have been published in the latest issue of the journal Arctic.
Hadrosaurs were herbivorous dinosaurs. Vavrek noted that based on the discovered vertebra, it is estimated that this hadrosaur was about 8 meters long, and this discovery in the high-latitude Arctic region is truly "rare." He pointed out that these Arctic hadrosaurs lived during the Late Cretaceous period, between 100 million and 66 million years ago. At that time, the island environment was separated from the North American continent, which means they could not have migrated south during the winter. Due to continental drift, Axel Heiberg Island would have been located slightly further south than its current position at that time, but still within the Arctic Circle.
Several dinosaur fossils have been discovered in recent years in the Canadian province of Alberta, which is located south of the Arctic Circle. Vavrek is the lead paleontologist at the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in Alberta. He believes this discovery helps define the actual range where dinosaurs once lived. At that time, the average temperature in the Arctic region was 15 degrees Celsius higher than it is today, and the living environment for dinosaurs in the region was far less extreme than it is now; however, the Arctic still experienced 24 hours of daylight in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter. Therefore, there was not much vegetation available for hadrosaurs to eat during the winter.
Vavrek pointed out that the Canadian Arctic region, similar to the North Slope region of Alaska in the United States, contains a large number of dinosaur fossils waiting to be excavated. However, due to geological conditions, geographical location, and transportation challenges, excavation work in the Canadian Arctic lags far behind.
