AXEL HEIBERG ISLAND
After gathering dust for more than two decades, a small fossil of a dinosaur vertebra found on Axel Heiberg Island in 1992 is getting its turn in the spotlight.

A type of duck-billed Hadrosaur, similar to a Brachylophosaurus depicted here, once lived on what is now Axel Heiberg Island roughly 75 million years ago, when the climate of the Eastern Arctic was likely similar to the West Coast of B.C. today, according to a paper published in the scientific journal Arctic. - graphic copyright Julius T. Csotonyi

After finding the archived fossil while doing research on what the Eastern Arctic would have looked like during the late Cretaceous period, roughly 75 million years ago, paleontologist Matthew Vavrek and his colleagues realized the humble fossil - which consists of a single bone from a spinal column - marks a significant scientific discovery. It is the farthest North a non-flying dinosaur has been found anywhere in the world to date.

"For me, the biggest thing about this fossil, at least from the scientific side, is it's a really important thing because of where it comes from, because we know so little about the Eastern Arctic," Vavrek told Nunavut News/North.

The fossil comes from a duck-billed dinosaur, or Hadrosaur, that would have measured between seven and eight metres long. It was found within the same layer as pollen and other plant material that suggests that 75 million years ago, Nunavut had an ecosystem not unlike the West Coast of British Columbia today, said Vavrek.

"Really, the cold weather in Nunavut is only a thing that's been going on for the last 20 million years at most," he said. "For a good portion of the time before that, Nunavut and all of the Arctic had this kind of temperate environment."

At the time, the Earth was an average of 15 degrees warmer than it is today, although temperatures near the equator were not drastically different than they are now. While much of what is now called Nunavut was located north of the Arctic Circle and had periods of complete darkness in the winter and 24-hour sunlight in the summer, there was significantly more heat and humidity than there is today.

Current scientific evidence suggests the Eastern Arctic was an isolated land mass during that time, cut off from the rest of eastern North America by a waterway in a climate too warm to form winter sea ice. Also, eastern and western North America were believed to be split by a larger body of water.

Although the larger fossilized trees found on Axel Heiberg Island are dated at 50 million years old, the discovery of a 75-million-year-old land-dwelling large dinosaur suggests the ecosystem was rich enough to sustain a population of large animals, said Vavrek.

"You have this flora you know was there from the pollen, and you have this dinosaur that was on an island that was still north of the Arctic Circle," he said. "It would probably have sustained a whole population of animals that size."

Vavrek is head paleontologist and curator at the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum near Grande Prairie, Alta.

After more than a decade of planning, the museum aims to increase awareness on what is known about dinosaurs that lived north of the heavily-studied Badlands in southern Alberta. It is set to open in September.

Digging for dinosaur bones in Nunavut is a challenging endeavour, both because of logistical challenges and travel costs and because the climate often has its way with fossils long before researchers discover them.

Permafrost limits how deep one can dig, and also "is just constantly churning up the top layers of dirt and rock," which means that most fossils that are found are incomplete and heavily eroded, said Vavrek.

"I work in the Arctic because I think it is really interesting because we know so little about it," he said. "I think it's a really important area to study. Even today, the modern Arctic is warming more than any other place in the world.

"I think it's very important to go to these areas that have experienced this huge change in climate in the past and look at how animals responded to see if we can't learn something about the future."

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