Science / Medicine : Dinosaur Bones in the Arctic

Canadian researchers have found dinosaur bones in the eastern Arctic, the first evidence that the prehistoric animals lived so far north. The discovery casts doubt on the popular theory that suggests that the lumbering giants became extinct after a comet hit the Earth, throwing up clouds of dust that blotted out sunlight.

Discovery of the bones of a duck-billed hadrosaur, which lived about 65 to 75 million years ago, suggests that dinosaurs were able to survive a normal Arctic winter that includes two or three months of darkness.

The bones were discovered last summer on Bylot Island off the north coast of Baffin Island in northernmost Canada above the Arctic Circle. They were spotted by an Inuit native, Joshua Enookolook, 21, who was hired under a summer youth employment program to search for fossils.