A team of paleontologists discovered a track site filled with footprints of what appeared to be duck-billed dinosaurs at the Denali National Park in Alaska.
Duck-billed dinosaurs, also called hadrosaurs, were first believed to only live in lower regions, close to the ground. This new discovery proves they also were able to survive in high-altitudes as well, where the environment was extremely cold.
The fossils also depicted a multi-generational flock, meaning adults and their young used to travel or hunt together. Eight percent of the footprints found by the team belonged to adult hadrosaurs, while 13 percent belonged to younger ones.
Their track proved the whole herd lived in the Arctic region during the Cretaceous period, and never migrated to another location.
The research sheds new light on the way duck-billed dinosaurs lived together in a single herd, as well as the paleobiology of dinosaurs that thrived in northern regions, especially in Arctic areas.
"Denali is one of the best dinosaur footprint localities in the world. What we found that last day was incredible - so many tracks, so big and well preserved," said Anthony R. Fiorillo, lead author of the study and curator of Perot Museum of Nature and Sciences, Earth Science division.
He further explained that the fossil featured a lot of skin impressions, allowing the team to picture what the dinosaur's bottom feet looked like. The team also found evidences of other animals such as worms, larvae, and bugs. These imprints may reveal the condition of the ecosystem in that area millions of years ago.
Other fossilized footprints found in the national park depicted the therizinosaurs, ceratopsians, and pterosaurs.
Other researchers involved in the study included Stephen Hasiotis from the University of Kansas and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi from the Hokkaido University Museum.
Further details of the study were published in the July 10 issue of Geology.
