WASHINGTON Q The discovery 600 miles from the North Pole of fossils of a crocodilelike animal suggests that the frozen Arctic was once as balmy as present-day Florida, a researcher says.
In a study published Friday in the journal Science, scientists say that above the Arctic Circle in far northern Canada they found the fossilized remains of a number of champosaurs, extinct, toothy animals that resemble a modern-day crocodile.
"We found a whole assemblage of fossils, from both young and adults," said University of Rochester geophysicist John H. Tarduno, the lead author of the study. "There were also turtles and fish."
The champosaur and the turtles were cold-blooded animals that could not have survived in the current climate of the Canadian Arctic, Tarduno said.
"These fossils tell us that there had to have been a substantial growing season there then, and that the climate was very unlike the Arctic now," he said.
Temperatures at the fossil site now routinely drop to 60 degrees below zero Fahrenheit in the winter. But when the champosaur lived there 86 million to 92 million years ago, temperatures rarely reached freezing, and summertime readings of 80 degrees were common.
"We think it was typical of what Florida is now," Tarduno said.
No one had found a champosaur so close to the Arctic before, said David Weishampel, a Johns Hopkins University dinosaur expert. "The new find suggests that the poles were a lot warmer and more stable then than they are now," he said.
The closest previous find of champosaur fossils was about 1,000 miles south of the Canadian location, Tarduno said. The champosaur had a long snout, powerful jaws filled with teeth and a long tail.
Copyright 1998, Deseret News Publishing Corp.
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