Yes, *Arctic* dinosaurs

“Arctic Dinosaurs” is a fascinating documentary (I've seen it before) about…well, yes, arctic dinosaurs! We meet two groups of scientists digging for dinosaur fossils in Alaska, close to the Arctic Sea coast. It turns out that the area was teeming with life during the Cretaceous period, with creatures resembling Hadrosaurus, Triceratops and Velociraptor roaming temperate forests of conifer trees. While the climate was tolerable during the summer, it would have been cold and dark during the long polar nights, raising a lot of intriguing questions about dinosaur biology and behavior.

Did they migrate long distances, like caribou, to avoid the worst weather conditions? Or did they stay put in the High Arctic? (During the Cretaceous, Alaska was even closer to the North Pole than today.) If the latter was the case, dinosaurs must have been “warm-blooded” like mammals and birds! This neat solution, which I happen to second, creates another problem, though. If non-avian dinosaurs resembled their avian relatives and mammals, why did they die out after the famous meteor impact? The documentary suggests that dinosaurs may have started to disappear due to climate change long before the meteor struck Earth, but I'm not sure if this makes sense either – the dinos at the North Pole would have been *adapted* to climate change.

“Arctic Dinosaurs” doesn't just deal with the dinosaurs, but also with the paleontologists studying them. Looking into the world of hard working scientists (sometimes backed up by rugged miners) was fascinating to watch! I've already reviewed this production once, giving it four stars out of five, but this time it gets FIVE STARS.

Recommended.