New Dinosaur Fossils in Antarctica: The Research Explained

Dr. William Hammer, a distinguished geology professor from Augustana College in Illinois, shared his team’s discoveries of new dinosaur fossils in Antarctica that they made while researching Jurassic period fossils at the Geosciences colloquium at UWM Friday, April 8.

These new dinosaurs were part of the sauropodomorpha clade (sauropods), or, long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs that typically walked on all fours. Most people would associate this large type of dinosaur with one if its ancestors, the brachiosaurus.

Dr. Hammer and his team discovered bits and pieces of these fossils on Mount Kirkpatrick at around 12,500 feet on the almost 15,000-foot mountain. They found parts of the vertebrae, pelvis, and femur bones, with only a few days left in their research expedition.

The sauropod fossils were from the early Jurassic period. This is important since hardly any fauna from that time period have been found.

They concluded that these fossils belonged to small juveniles that were approximately a year old.

There are a number of ways to determine that these sauropods were juveniles. First, there is the absence of neurocentral suture fusion. Sutures are small joints bound together by bone fibres that form in the skull, and these sutures close over time as we, and dinosaurs, age. This means that researchers can tell how mature the dinosaur was after examining the sutures and where they were in their development. In this case the sauropod’s sutures were not fused together, meaning they were young.

Secondly, the sauropod had highly vascularized fibrolamellar bones. Large blocks of woven fibrolamellar bone are only found in younger mammals.

And thirdly, there was an absence of distinct lines of arrested growth (LADs), or growth lines.

Getting the fossils off of Mt. Kirkpatrick wasn’t easy. During the second season, out of the three Hammer spent at their excavation quarry, they used dynamite to get huge sections out.

“We had a couple fun days of blasting,” Hammer said.

Taking out the huge slabs was much more difficult for the team, but this way they didn’t have to break any bones by jackhammering out smaller sections.

Hammer said a 700-pound slab they shipped back to their lab almost didn’t fit in their elevator. They even had to get an engine lift, which is used to lower car engines down into the cars, at an auto parts store to get it on their table.

These types of research expeditions aren’t as exciting or vacation-esque as some people might think, especially in Antarctica.

Hammer said “it was a not a fun place to work.” Temperatures could drop to -40°F, which affected helicopter performance, camp generators, and also made it hard to breathe. Not to mention that Mt. Kirkpatrick was 70-80 miles away from their camp.

There are many ideas of how dinosaurs existed and lived in the Antarctic region, but  Hammer said it is hard to say whether the dinosaurs started there in that area, or migrated there.

Regardless if researchers are looking in Antarctica, or anywhere else around the world, finding locations of dinosaur fossils is difficult.

“Looking for fossils is very serendipitous, you get lucky sometimes,” Hammer said. “We have spent a whole lot more time looking and not finding anything than collecting.”

Hammer and his research team would love to go back to Mt. Kirkpatrick. They think they could probably find more fossils from the upper Triassic period there; which is older than the Jurassic.