02/27/2004: 
Arcanum
For Spring Break, I'm Going To Gondwana
or, Dinosaurs Keeping it Real and Kicking Ass at Spring Break 70 Million BC
from Washington Post [registration required]
WASHINGTON – Scientists have discovered two new dinosaur species in Antarctica's frozen reaches, one a primitive carnivore that survived long after its closest relatives had gone extinct, the other a large plant eater found on a mountainside 400 miles from the South Pole, they reported Thursday.
The new finds, excavated in December by separate expeditions working 2,000 miles apart, are holdovers from a time when Antarctica had a relatively mild climate and formed the core of a Southern Hemisphere supercontinent known today as Gondwana.
The carnivore, estimated to be between 6 and 8 feet tall and weighing 300 pounds, probably died about 70 million years ago. It was found on James Ross Island, in the Weddell Sea close to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
At virtually the same time, near Mount Kirkpatrick on the Beardmore Glacier, a different research team found part of a large dinosaur pelvis and tailbone embedded in a stone outcrop. Researchers said the plant eater, or sauropod, was probably about 30 feet long and lived about 190 million years ago.
The two discoveries shed new light on Antarctica's ancient past, when it formed part of a landmass that also included present-day Africa, India, South America and Australia. Both expeditions were sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the independent federal agency that coordinates U.S. research in Antarctica.
"Our goal was to go to the Antarctic Peninsula to look for fossils at the end of the age of dinosaurs," said paleontologist James Martin of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, co-leader of the James Ross expedition with biologist Judd Case of Saint Mary's College of California.
Later, scientists discovered ancient beer kegs and photos of Bronchasaurus "baring it all" in a daring, exciting Spring Break 70 million BC exclusive.
More
Martin said the team was not looking for dinosaurs. It wanted to test a theory that about 65 million years ago, animals migrated from North America to South America, Antarctica and eventually Australia to form the lineages that produced Australia's varied population of marsupials, or "pouched" mammals. "We were looking for a smoking-gun marsupial to prove the hypothesis," he said.But spring ice blocked the team's approach to its preferred site, so their ship made landfall instead at James Ross Island. The team expected to find marine fossils in sedimentary rock that had once rested on the floor of the Weddell Sea.
"Instead, we found dinosaur bones," Case said. By analyzing an ankle joint, lower leg bones, jaw fragments and teeth, the team determined that it had unearthed a new species of therapod, or meat eater, which had probably died on land and then drifted out to sea.
The still-unnamed remains are those of an animal with much more primitive characteristics than contemporaries such as Tyrannosaurus rex, which lived in warmer latitudes. "It's kind of a relic fauna that still existed in Antarctica" long after close relatives had died out elsewhere, Martin said.
Serendipity also helped paleontologist William Hammer of Augustana College in Illinois, whose trip to the Beardmore area was designed primarily to continue excavating a site where he had found a new species of carnivorous dinosaur in 1991.
"We had also intended to do a lot of reconnaissance," said Hammer, noting that the weather is so hostile and the digging season so short in Antarctica that researchers must take advantage of every opportunity to scout the terrain.
Hammer said his team's mountain guide found the new bones on one such exploratory hike. The remains are probably those of the biggest sauropod ever found in Antarctica, and one of the oldest found anywhere, he added.
Geological forces had lifted the remains 13,900 feet into the air above the tree-and-fern-lined riverbank where the animal once grazed in the days before Antarctica drifted to Earth's southern tip
