Dinosaurs on Ice

Use of old mining techniques long employed in the Arctic - to solve a new problem - the recovery of Alaskan dinosaurs buried in permafrost - will be tested and then used to collect fossils and compare them to the polar dinosaurs found in Australia. The rocks on the Colville River banks span the last 40 million years that the dinosaurs existed. This is the only place on Earth where polar dinosaurs can be sampled over such a prolonged period of time. Until now the fossils extracted have been fragmented from alternately freezing and thawing. Fossils deep underground are not as weathered. This technique will open the way to safer excavation of those better quality specimens thus improving the global record of polar dinosaurs.