Page 79 - DINOSOUR ATLAS

australia and antarctica
Islands of Antarctica

Dinosaur fossils have been DiscovereD on two of Antarctica’s islands.
The bone fragments that have been collected from James Ross Island
and Vega Island belong to the Late Cretaceous world. Imagine a woodland Bransfield Strait
environment where a meat-eating dinosaur stalked its prey (or scavenged
on the body of an already dead animal), scaring a herd of timid,
ostrichlike hypsilophodonts that ran for their lives past a slow-moving Vega Island
ankylosaur. This was the Antarctica of about 80 million years ago. James Ross Island
In recent years, teams of paleontologists have begun to reveal this Antarctic Peninsula
lost world. In areas not covered by snow and ice, they scour the SOUTHERN OCEAN
rocky terrain for evidence of dinosaurs.
Weddell
Sea
d icY island landscaPE
u sitE location
Antarctica has many islands, most of which James Ross Island and the smaller Vega Island
lie close to the mainland, as do James Ross James ross island nearby lie off the northern coast of Antarctica,
Island and Vega Island. They are almost fully rises to a height of at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
covered in snow and thick ice, but both have about 4,900 ft (1,500 m)
small areas of ice-free ground where fossils
are found. Less than one percent of
Antarctica is bare rock.

Bony tail cluB
may have been
used as a weapon

, ankYlosaur (unnamEd)
Bony plates and spikes
defended the bodies of In 1986, fragments of a Late Cretaceous
plant-eating ankylosaurs ankylosaur skull and armor plates were collected
on James Ross Island. Like all other dinosaur fossils
found on Antarctica, not enough material survived
to enable a positive identification, which is why the
specimen does not have a scientific name. It can
only be assigned to its family group.

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