Scientists Retrieve Dinosaurs from North Slope

Submitted by Kerynn Fisher
Phone: (907) 474-6941
07/03/02

University of Alaska Museum researchers led an expedition in July to the Colville River area on Alaska's North Slope to retrieve hadrosaur and pachyrhinosaur specimens.

The Colville River from Umiat to Ocean Point is the most productive dinosaur-bearing area in polar regions in the world. In 14 years of field work, museum researchers have collected and cataloged more than 8,000 teeth and bone fragments.

The UA Museum's work focuses on the Liscomb bone bed, with specimens from the late Cretaceous period, discovered in 1961 by Shell Oil Company geologist Robert Liscomb.

Earlier this summer a team of UA Museum researchers, students and volunteers working with soldiers from Fort Wainwright's 4-123rd Aviation B Company retrieved what is believed to be an ichthyosaur from the Howard Pass area of the western Brooks Range.

The specimen and the plaster it is secured in weighs approximately one ton and is approximately 12 feet long and four feet wide. Because the Museum's current facilities will not accommodate a specimen of this size, Gangloff does not expect begin work on the specimen until the Museum's expansion is open in 2005.

Note to editors: Downloadable high-resolution photos are available at http://www.uaf.edu/files/news/download/releasephotos/dinosaur/

For more information, contact Kerynn Fisher, Communications Coordinator, University of Alaska Museum, at 474-6941. There was recent coverage in the Anchorage Daily News, July 2, 2002 and on KTUU-TV Anchorage