Artic hyenas?

[MrR]

Interesting article on a fossil tooth that his been "buried" in a museum vault for years. It was recently identified as a type of hyena that may have roamed the Arctic Circle. NYT subscribers, or those who haven't gone over a free limit, should be able to read. Cheers.

 

Arctic hyena tooth fossil

[I_gotta_rock]

Cool! I was at a presentation of a Master's Thesis the other month telling about her work trying to understand the bone structure of ceratopsid dinosaurs that lived above the Arctic Circle. The question on everybody's minds, of course, is how did they stay warm when the average annual temp was at the freezing point, give or take a degree. We are pretty sure they weren't warm blooded. There is no evidence of feathers. She did her Master's work studying the bones to see if there were any differences between the Arctic ceratopsids and the ones further south. There are, but it will be a PhD project - and probably many years after - to figure out what it means.

[Fossildude19]

Moved to FOSSIL NEWS.