Dinosaur fossils found in Antarctica

Scientists working in Antarctica this winter have found fossils of what appear to be two new species of dinosaurs – a 6-foot meat- eater and one of the earliest plant-eaters ever found.

The discoveries add to the small but growing list of dinosaurs unearthed in Antarctica since 1986. Scientists said the animals adapted and thrived in a climate more akin to the Pacific Northwest than to Antarctica today.

“It was more lush,” said biologist Judd Case of Saint Mary’s College of California, a co-leader of one of the teams that reported their finds Thursday in Washington. “You [would have seen] snow or ice back on the hilltops, but lots of trees. Cool, but not cold.”

Two teams funded by the National Science Foundation made their discoveries within days of each other in December, during the brief Antarctic summer.

The dinosaurs were separated by 2,000 miles and 120 million years. The primitive plant-eater grazed about 190 million years ago, early in the Jurassic period. The carnivore hunted at the end of the Cretaceous period, 70 million years ago. The scientists were jubilant about their good luck. “You don’t immediately want to believe it, just in case,” said paleontologist William Hammer, of Augustana College in Rock island, Ill. who led the second team. But when it sinks in, he said, “it’s close to pandemonium.”